THE  GIFT  OF 

MAY  TREAT  MORRISON 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

ALEXANDER  F  MORRISON 


-J" 


GOVERNMENT   AND    CO. 

LIMITED 


GOVERNMENT  AND  CO. 

LIMITED 


AN  EXAMINATION  OF  THE  TENDENCIES  OF 
PRIVILEGE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


HORATIO  W.  SEYMOUR 


CHICAGO 

A.  C.  McCLURG   AND   COMPANY 

1895 


COPYRIGHT 
Bv  A.  C.  McCLURG   AND  CO. 

A.    D.    1895 


55/3 


t 


CONTENTS. 


Chapter.  Page. 

I.  Erring  Democracies,                -  *        7 

II.  Monarchies  and  Democracies,  -             lo 

III.  Barons,  New  and  Old              -  -       15 

IV.  Privilege  Under  Mask,  -              18 
V.  What  it  Demands,         -            -  -       21 

VI.  The  Aberration  of  a  People,  -              25 

VII.  On  a  Low  Plane,           -            -  '30 

VIII.  A  Question  of  Morals,     -  -             34 

IX.  Parties  of  Moral  Ideas,         -  -       39 

X.  Oppressor  and  Oppressed,  -             46 

XI.  The  Price  of  Liberty,             -  -      50 

XII.  Two  American  Oligarchies,  -              56 

XIII.  Sloth  and  Waste,         -            -  -      61 

XIV.  Easy  Infamy  of  Privilege,  -             68 
XV.  Protectionism's  Bribes,           -  -       73 

XVI.  American  Pauper  Labor,  -             78 

XVII.  Privilege's  Broken  Promises,  -      86 

XVIII.  Like  the  Thief  in  the  Night,  -            90 

XIX.  By  Its  Fruits,    -            -            -  -      95 

XX.  A  Giant  in  Chains,             -  -            102 

XXI.  Americans  with  a  Grievance,  -     107 

XXII.  Our  Dependent  Classes,  -           114 

428539 


6  CONTENTS 

Chapter.  i'^se. 

XXIII.  On  TO  Washington,       -  -             -     119 

XXIV.  A  Fiery  Path,          -  -             -            124 
XXV.  Is  It  Well  Enough  ?     -  -             -     132 

XXVI.  Where  to  Look  for  the  Remedy,  137 

XXVII.  Desperate     Rich     and  Desperate 

Poor,    -             -  -"144 


GOVERNMENT  AND   CO. 

LIMITED. 

I. 
ERRING   DEMOCRACIES. 

IT  has  been  said  of  republics  that  they 
do  not  possess  the  power  of  self  refor- 
mation. There  is  no  record  of  a  corrupted 
democracy  reclaimed. 

Monarchies  have  been  enfeebled  even  to 
the  point  of  dissolution,  and,  by  a  happy 
change  of  rulers  or  of  dynasties,  have  reha- 
bilitated themselves  ;  but  misguided  popular 
governments,  though  their  fate  has  been 
foreseen  and  the  causes  impelling  it  have 
been  known,  have  gone  irresistibly  to  extinc- 
tion. 

The  explanation  is  obvious.  Monarchies 
may  be  debauched  by  a  weak  sovereign 
and  a  corrupt  court,  but,  if  wiser  and  better 
men  succeed  to  power,  remedial  measures 
promptly  taken  will  correct  the  more  glar- 
7 


8         GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

ing  wrongs  arid/rgFiTB^e: wholly  the  principal 
causes  of.  po,pular  dec£kdence.  The  evil 
inllucncc.  61:  a  vitioiuS- jrwoharch,  surrounded 
by  a  profligate  aristocracy,  will  soon  com- 
municate itself  to  the  subjects.  In  like 
manner  the  wholesome  example  of  an 
enlightened  ruling  class  cannot  fail  to  exert 
a  powerful  effect  for  good,  even  upon  a 
populace  long  accustomed  to  the  excesses 
of  a  thoroughly  despicable  court. 

While  a  democratic  government  may  at 
times  be  better  or  worse  than  the  people 
from  whom  it  springs,  sooner  or  later  it  will 
reach  the  popular  level  and  remain  there. 

The  representative  character  of  republics 
is  the  one  feature  of  popular  government 
that  is  not  susceptible  of  change.  The 
people  are  the  sole  source  of  authority;  and, 
if  government  is  not  what  it  should  be,  it 
is  because  the  people  are  not  what  they 
should  be.  If  popular  government  descends 
from  one  lower  level  to  another  there  need 
be  no  doubt  that  the  people  themselves 
preceded  it  in  the  decline. 

Whatever  tends  to  weaken  or  to  corrupt 
individual    character    in    a    republic,    there- 


ERRING  DEMOCRACIES.  9 

fore,  operates  unerringly  upon  the  govern- 
ment of  that  republic,  and  when  the  moral 
fibre  of  a  majority  of  the  people  has  been 
destroyed  the  possibility  of  reform  is  gone. 

People  who  cannot  or  will  not  reform 
themselves  will  not  undertake  to  reform 
their  government.  Its  very  vices  commend 
it  to  them.  Its  infamies  do  not  displease 
them,  because  they  recognize  them  as  their 
own.  They  listen  languidly  to  the  exhorta- 
tions of  men  who  would  awaken  their  pride 
and  virtue.  They  rush  eagerly  to  the  support 
of  leaders  who  excite  their  passions  and  play 
upon  their  ignorance.  They  glory  in  their 
delusions,  and  the  hope  of  personal  advan- 
tage leads  them  on  to  destruction. 

A  corrupted  democracy  never  has  been 
reformed :  it  is  probable  that  a  corrupted 
democracy  never  will  be  reformed. 


II. 

MONARCHIES  AND  DEMOCRACIES. 

THE  fundamental  idea  of  a  monarchy,  the 
principle  that  most  sharply  distinguishes 
it  from  a  democracy,  is  Privilege.  The  funda- 
mental idea  of  a  pure  democracy,  the  prin- 
ciple that  distinguishes  it  most  sharply  from 
a  monarchy,  is  Equality. 

Divested  of  all  the  eye-filling  appurten- 
ances of  royalty,  a  constitutional  monarchy 
does  not  differ  much  from  a  republic,  except 
that  it  necessarily  divides  and  separates  its 
subjects  into  various  orders  and  estates,  some 
of  them  enjoying  special  privileges  that  are 
denied  to  the  others.  That  is  the  essence 
of  monarchy.  The  introduction  and  growth 
of  privilege  in  a  republic  can  not  fail  to  be  a 
menace  to  the  government ;  so  also  the  intro- 
duction and  growth  of  equality  in  a  monarchy 
can  not  fail  to  be  a  menace  to  the  govern- 
ment. 

The  world  is  familiar  with  the  assumption 
on  the  part  of  citizens  of  republics  that  they 

lO 


MONARCHIES  AND  DEMOCRACIES.     1 1 

are  superior  to  the  subjects  of  monarchies. 
In  the  best  estate  of  a  pure  republic  there  is 
reason  for  such  a  contention.  The  strong 
and  resourceful  man  who  subscribes  to  the 
doctrine  of  "  Equal  rights  for  all  and  special 
privileges  for  none,"  is  morally  the  superior  of 
the  man  of  similar  attainments  who  supports 
and  takes  advantage  of  the  monarchical  idea, 
that  the  classes  best  able  to  take  care  of 
themselves  must  have  the  discriminating 
favor  of  their  government. 

Citizens  of  a  true  republic,  taken  as  a 
whole,  have  a  right  to  assume  a  superiority 
to  the  subjects  of  a  monarchy,  for  of  their 
number  are  hosts  of  men  who  have  volun- 
tarily surrendered  advantages  which,  under  a 
less  enlightened  system,  their  natural  power 
and  opportunities  might  easily  have  secured 
for  them. 

The  participation  of  an  entire  people,  the 
rich  as  well  as  the  poor,  the  wise  as  well  as 
the  ignorant,  in  the  formation  of  a  republic, 
manifests  at  every  step  of  the  proceeding 
many  of  the  traits  which  in  private  life  go  to 
make  up  the  most  elevated  character. 

Greed,  pride,  distrust,  ambition,  injustice 


12       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

and  vainglory  lie  at  the  base  of  every  dyn- 
asty and  of  every  aristocracy.  There  can  be 
no  true  democracy  without  self-abnegation, 
mutual  confidence  and  a  desire  for  absolute 
justice  and  equality,  on  the  part  of  the  very 
class  which  in  a  monarchy  displays  propen- 
sities exactly  the  reverse  of  these. 

With  this  fact  in  view,  the  citizens  of  a 
republic  may  be  pardoned  if  they  sometimes 
extol  their  own  institutions ;  for  the  weakest 
as  well  as  the  strongest  among  them  knows 
that,  so  far  as  human  imperfections  will 
admit,  the  golden  rule  has  been  carried  into 
the  state.  They  have  practiced  collectively 
the  virtues  that  everywhere  are  deemed 
admirable  in  the  individual.  Deference  to 
the  rights  of  others,  a  love  of  justice  for 
the  sake  of  justice  —  that  is  the  essence  of 
democracy. 

No  matter  how  enlightened  a  monarchy 
may  be,  so  long  as  it  retains  the  customary 
attachments  of  caste  and  privilege,  it  must 
perpetuate  more  or  less  of  barbarism.  The 
ostentation  of  royalty  and  aristocracy,  devised 
to  impress  the  humble,  only  accentuates  the 
barriers  raised  by  generations  dead  and  gone 


MONARCHIES  AND  DEMOCRACIES.      13 

against  those  who,  while  the  institution  lasts, 
are  to  be  its  victims.  One  class  may  sympa- 
thize with  a  lower  class  and  may  seek  to 
ameliorate  its  condition,  but  that  which  actu- 
ates it  is  condescension  and  not  justice.  The 
one  great  civilizing  and  humanizing  idea, — 
that  of  brotherhood,  is  absent. 

Democracy  carries  into  the  state  the  equal- 
ity, the  trust,  the  fair  play  of  a  family.  No 
man  who  is  a  citizen  is  a  stranger.  There  is 
no  tinsel  to  dazzle  his  eyes;  there  are  no  aw- 
ful presences,  no  ponderous  titles,  to  fill  him 
with  dismay.  There  is  no  pomp  to  beguile 
him,  and  there  are  no  largesses  to  corrupt 
him.  More  important  than  all  else,  there  are 
no  laws  and  no  "  institutions  "  handed  down 
from  a  ravening  ancestry  to  thwart  his  aspi- 
rations and  to  deprive  him  of  the  opportuni- 
ties for  advancement  which  capacity  and 
industry  may  open  to  him. 

To  the  extent  that  a  republic  fulfills  the 
promise  of  its  founders,  it  removes  from  one 
of  the  most  important  theaters  of  human  ac- 
tion— that  of  government — the  baseness,  the 
selfishness,  the  wrong,  against  which  every 
moralist    has   most    strenuously    contended. 


H       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

To  the  extent  that  it  departs  from  these  high 
ideals,  it  relapses  toward  an  inferior  civili- 
zation, and,  by  retaining  the  forms  of  justice 
without  their  substance,  emphasizes  the 
mockery  of  all  pretense  and  the  danger  of 
every  falsehood. 


III. 

BARONS,   NEW   AND   OLD. 

THE  first  century  of  the  American  Consti- 
tution terminated  in  1887.  Some  of 
the  objects  of  that  instrument,  as  set  forth  in 
the  preamble,  are  to  establish  justice,  to  pro- 
mote the  general  welfare,  and  to  secure  the 
blessings  of  liberty. 

Justice  was  not  established  for  a  few,  but 
for  all.  It  was  not  the  welfare  of  a  class  that 
was  to  be  promoted  ;  it  was  the  general 
welfare.  The  blessings  of  liberty  were  to  be 
made  secure,  not  for  a  season  or  for  a 
number,  but  forever  and  for  all. 

The  first  century  of  the  American  Consti- 
tution closed  with  Privilege  as  well  rooted  in 
the  legislative  practices  of  the  country  as  the 
most  consistent  monarchist  could  have  wished. 
If  its  approach  had  been  stealthy,  its  growing 
arrogance  had  made  it  careless  of  disguises 
and  reckless  of  danger. 

Addressing  itself  to  a  government  pledged 
on  every  hand  to  justice  and  equality,  it  de- 
15 


1 6       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

manded  for  itself,  with  magnificent  impu- 
dence, rights  and  opportunities  which  were 
denied  to  others.  Assuming  feudal  airs  and 
responsibilities,  it  exacted  from  the  law-mak- 
ing power  of  the  republic  concessions  de- 
signed for  its  own  exclusive  profit  and  neces- 
sarily for  the  oppression  of  a  more  numerous 
class  equally  entitled  to  the  protecting  favor 
of  government. 

Having  the  opportunity  and  the  power  to 
control  public  affairs,  it  improved  the  one 
and  exerted  the  other,  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  reverse  the  beneficent  policy  of  the  repub- 
lic, and  to  enter  upon  a  retrogressive  move- 
ment unexampled  in  the  history  of  modern 
nations. 

When  the  barons  of  King  John's  time 
forced  that  representative  of  the  absolutism 
of  the  thirteenth  century  to  surrender  to 
them  some  of  the  powers  that  he  had  arro- 
gated to  himself,  there  was  a  distinct  gain 
for  liberty,  though  the  idea  of  equality  was 
not  recognized. 

When  the  barons  of  America  forced  the 
United  States  government  to  confer  upon 
themselves    exclusively  privileges    sacredly 


BARONS,  NEW  AND  OLD.  17 

held  in  trust  for  all,  there  was  a  notable  loss 
of  liberty,  for  a  great  and  noble  human  aspi- 
ration was  perverted  by  the  process. 

Twenty-five  nobles  were  appointed  in 
King  John's  time  to  see  that  the  provisions 
of  Magna  Charta  were  faithfully  observed. 
The  barons  of  our  own  day  have  been  spared 
this  exertion.  The  provisions  of  their  great 
charters  of  injustice  are  everywhere  loyally 
enforced  by  the  official  agents  of  the  sover- 
eigns whom  they  despoil. 

The  unequal  laws  and  the  dishonest  poli- 
cies which  greed  has  devised  bear  the  sig- 
natures of  presidents,  governors  and  mayors; 
and  their  proper  formality  is  attested  by 
the  speakers  and  presidents  of  the  legislative 
bodies,  national  and  state,  which  have  given 
them  their  sanction. 

They  meet  every  requirement  of  the  con- 
stitution save  one  —  they  violate  its  spirit. 
The  bear  the  great  seals  of  the  republic  and 
of  the  commonwealth,  but  they  are  spotted 
all  over  with  evidences  of  triumphant  avarice 
and  of  trusts  betrayed. 


IV. 

PRIVILEGE   UNDER   MASK. 

PRIVILEGE  in  a  monarchy  is  a  long 
standing  assumption.  It  has  no  apol- 
ogies to  offer;  its  candor  is  its  chief  virtue; 
it  stands  forth  in  its  proper  person,  with  no 
pretense  of  philanthropy  and  no  claim  to 
unselfishness.  It  is  so  thoroughly  consistent 
that  it  adopts  no  disguises.  It  believes,  and 
it  has  taught  most  of  the  people  whom  it 
oppresses  to  believe  that,  as  the  rich  are  the 
wise  and  good,  it  is  proper  that  the  laws 
should  favor  the  rich  and  that  the  rich  should 
exercise  a  controlling  influence  in  govern- 
ment. 

Privilege  in  the  United  States  is  a  pretense 
and  an  intrusion.  It  pretends  to  serve  the 
interests  of  all,  while,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
has  regard  only  for  the  welfare  of  the  few ; 
it  is  rooted  in  falsehood.  It  bribes  some 
men,  it  corrupts  many  men,  and  it  deludes 
millions  of  men;  it  never  is  honest;  it  never 
avows  its  real  purpose.  It  thrives  only  as  it 
i8 


PRIVILEGE  UNDER  MASK.  19 

misleads  the  masses  of  the  people  and  per- 
verts such  as  cannot  be  deceived. 

Privilege  in  America  comprehends  every 
cunning  subversion  of  law  to  the  selfish  pur- 
poses of  an  individual.  It  is  so  well  grounded 
in  the  policies  of  the  government  and  in  the 
habits  of  the  people,  that  American  political 
contests  now  turn  upon  it  almost  exclusively, 
and  it  is  exerting  an  ever-widening  influence 
upon  commercial  and  industrial  affairs. 

It  is  the  organized  greed  of  an  era  that 
will  be  forever  memorable  for  the  remorse- 
less aggrandizement  of  wealth.  It  is  the 
militant  avarice  of  a  class  as  shrewd,  as 
unprincipled,  as  daring,  as  cruel  as  the  world 
ever  saw — as  the  imagination  of  man  ever 
delineated.  It  is  the  exaltation  of  all  that  is 
sordid  in  humanity,  all  that  is  wolfish  in  the 
powerful,  all  that  is  base  in  the  ignorant  and 
weak. 

Privilege  in  America  stands  at  the  doors 
of  Congress  and  demands  laws  which  place 
it  on  an  equality  with  the  government  in  the 
receipt  of  moneys  drawn  from  the  people. 
Privilege  graciously  permits  the  treasury  to 
have  one  dollar  if  it  can  have  two  dollars. 


20       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

Privilege  asks  in  the  name  of  labor,  and 
receives  in  the  name  of  monopoly.  Privilege 
begs  or  bullies,  whines  or  thunders,  cajoles  or 
threatens,  exactly  as  the  case  seems  to  war- 
rant. 

Privilege  disavows  every  responsibility. 
Because  it  can  persuade  the  federal  govern- 
ment to  betray  its  citizens,  it  is  the  more 
vociferous  in  its  demand  that  the  state  gov- 
ernments shall  do  the  same.  It  avoids  state 
and  municipal  taxation  by  the  same  methods 
that  it  employs  to  secure  an  unjust  partner- 
ship in  the  imposition  of  federal  taxation. 

Privilege  makes  many  solemn  engage- 
ments which  it  does  not  observe.  Privilege 
invents  many  plausible  excuses  for  its  de- 
mands. Privilege  is  the  prolific  source  of 
most  of  the  subtle  and  dangerous  errors 
which  everywhere  confront  the  American 
people.  Privilege  has  many  agents — men 
who  speak  in  its  name,  who  gorge  its  greed, 
who  secure  its  ends,  and  who  assume  to 
pledge  it  to  the  fulfillment  of  its  self-imposed 
obligations;  but,  their  work  accomplished, 
they  are  repudiated  by  their  principals,  and 
nothing  is  left  but  the  evidence  of  a  colossal 
infamy. 


WHAT   IT   DEMANDS. 

TARIFFS  and  other  taxes  levied  for  pri- 
vate rather  than  for  public  ends,  boun- 
ties of  every  style  and  description,  subsidies 
bestowed  in  many  different  ways  for  the  pur- 
pose of  bolstering  selfish  interests,  exclusive 
grants  of  franchises  by  which  opportunities 
are  monopolized,  pensions  to  the  extent  that 
they  may  have  become  mere  largesses,  unwise 
and  unnecessary  legislative  interference  with 
the  natural  rights  of  men,  by  means  of  which 
some  wicked  advantage  is  conferred  upon  a 
few  for  a  time,  and  nearly  all  gifts  of  public 
lands  or  moneys  to  corporations,  are  the  basis 
of  Privilege  as  it  exists  in  America  to-day. 
The  recipients  of  all  these  favors  stand 
together.  Singly  they  can  accomplish  little, 
but  united  in  a  compact  and  resourceful 
organization,  representing  what  a  president 
of  the  United  States  has  aptly  termed  the 
"  communism  of  pelf,"  they  are  all  power- 
ful in  shaping  the  destiny  of  the  nation. 


2  2       GO  VERNMENT  A ND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

This  element  lives  and  thrives  on  the 
industry  of  the  people.  We  greet  its  repre- 
sentatives with  smiles  when  they  come  beg- 
ging or  bullying  for  more.  We  dignify  the 
class  into  a  national  issue.  We  maintain  a 
great  political  party  whose  main  object  is  to 
sustain  its  impudence  and  to  lend  respecta- 
bility to  its  greed.  We  make  its  covetous- 
ness  a  matter  of  daily  thought  and  of  most 
solicitous  care. 

We  read  its  newspapers  with  patience 
and  we  listen  respectfully,  sometimes 
enthusiastically,  to  its  orators,  although  from 
neither  of  them  comes  an  idea  but  plunder, 
or  an  inspiration  but  selfishness.  We  submit 
humbly  to  its  reproaches  and  its  impudence. 
At  its  command  we  abdicate  our  reason  and 
our  intelligence  as  well  as  our  liberties.  We 
wink  at  its  faintly  disguised  greed.  We 
accept  its  foolish  assurance  that  it  sustains 
the  people,  and  that  the  people  do  not  sus- 
tain it.  We  maintain  a  pretense  of  belief  in 
its  patriotism.  We  march  in  its  processions, 
and  we  rend  the  air  with  our  shouts  as  its 
advocates,  most  of  them  ignorant  and  all  of 
them  conscienceless,  approach.     We  permit 


WHAT  IT  DEMANDS.  23 

its  agents  and  representatives  to  usurp  the 
places  which  statesmen  should  occupy,  to 
masquerade  before  the  world  as  types  of 
American  leadership,  and  to  spread  upon  our 
statute  books  in  our  name  laws  that  some 
day  will  bring  down  upon  us  the  reproach 
of  mankind  as  surely  as  the  earth  shall 
endure. 

Appealing  to  the  ignorance  as  well  as  to 
the  immorality  of  a  nation,  this  class  has 
acquired  its  present  prestige,  and  it  looks 
forward  to  a  future  of  increased  security,  by 
the  ease  with  which  a  people  with  somewhat 
too  keen  an  eye  upon  the  main  chance  may 
be  deluded.  The  chief  pity  of  it  all,  the 
darkest  side  of  it  all,  is  that  the  American 
republic,  with  ample  opportunity  to  inform 
itself  as  to  the  nature  of  this  controversy,  is 
not  even  now  discussing  the  right  and  wrong 
of  the  matter.  It  is  content,  apparently,  to 
consider  the  question  on  the  low  plane  which 
Privilege  itself  has  selected.  It  is  satisfied  to 
let  the  argument  rest  on  the  purely  commer- 
cial lines  of  profit  and  loss. 

The  issue  that  confronts  us  is  not:  "  Is 
this  policy  right,  or  is  it  wrong?"     It  is  the 


24       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

shameful  truth  that  all  contention,  all  investi- 
gation, all  prospect  or  possibility  of  what 
we  call  a  solution  of  the  problem,  is  embod- 
ied in  the  question:  "  Does  it  pay?" 


VI. 

THE  ABERRATION  OF  A  PEOPLE. 

ACTUATING  the  great  pecuniary  inter- 
ests which  have  intrenched  themselves 
in  the  laws  and  policies  of  government  in 
this  country,  is  a  spirit  of  gain  so  eager  and 
reckless  that,  even  in  its  effects  upon  men  as 
individuals,  it  long  ago  excited  the  condem- 
nation of  the  world.  It  is  a  spirit  which 
fills  our  mad  houses  and  other  retreats  with 
wrecks  and  castaways ;  which  costs  thou- 
sands of  lives  annually ;  which  has  tenanted 
many  a  suicide's  grave,  and  which  has  broken 
down  a  host  of  men  old  before  their  time. 

It  is  a  spirit  which  hesitates  at  no  sacri- 
fice that  promises  gain.  It  is  a  spirit  which 
absorbs  the  energies,  the  soul,  the  heart  of 
men ;  which  makes  them  reckless  of  every 
moral  obligation,  reckless  of  ease,  reckless 
of  health  and  life,  reckless  even  of  the  here- 
after. 

It  is  this  feverish  passion,  this  delirious 
craze  for  wealth,  which  has  laid  hold  of  gov- 

25 


26       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

ernment  in  this  republic  and  has  made  Privi- 
lege institutional.  It  is  the  aberration  of  a 
people  given  up  as  no  other  people  ever  was 
to  the  frenzy  of  acquisition,  which  has  blinded 
the  eyes  of  millions  to  the  wrong  and  the 
danger  of  existing  policies. 

The  spirit  of  trade,  the  spirit  that  is  quick 
to  take  advantage  of  the  weak  or  the  care- 
less, the  spirit  that  is  ever  on  the  alert  for 
profit,  the  spirit  that  scruples  at  no  trickery 
or  deception  promising  an  immediate  return 
in  money,  is  the  spirit  that  is  lodged  in  our 
laws  to-day. 

It  is  to  this  spirit  that  we  owe  the 
prevalent  idea,  that  the  government  supports 
the  people  and  that  the  people  do  not  sup- 
port the  government.  This  spirit  has 
brought  into  life  innumerable  political  indus- 
tries, which,  in  turn,  have  invited  to  this 
country  some  millions  of  working  people 
who  would  not  and  could  not  have  come 
here  unassisted,  and  whose  wretchedness  has 
become  a  national  scandal. 

This  spirit  has  taxed  all  the  people  for 
the  benefit  of  a  few  of  the  people.  This 
spirit  is  accountable  for  the  error  so  indus- 


THE  ABERRA  TION  OF  A  PEOPLE       27 

triously  propagated,  that  it  is  the  duty  of 
government  to  provide  work  and  wages  for 
all.  To  this  spirit  is  due  the  fact  that  the 
political  business  man  enters  upon  no  new 
venture  until  he  has  made  sure  of  a  favoring 
law  at  Washington  or  at  some  state  capital. 

This  spirit  has  developed  our  manufac- 
turing industries  at  the  expense  of  all  other 
industries,  to  an  extent  that  enables  them  to 
supply  any  and  all  markets  now  open  to 
them  by  working  half  time,  their  "  pro- 
tected" labor  starving  or  tramping  the  other 
half  of  the  time. 

This  spirit  has  made  it  feasible  for  one 
class  to  pay  some  wages  by  taking  from 
another  class  the  ability  to  pay  any  wages. 
This  spirit  has  forced  capital  and  labor  out 
of  naturally  productive  industries  into  natur- 
ally unproductive  industries. 

This  spirit  has  made  every  legislative  and 
every  executive  officer  of  the  government  a 
huckster,  every  foreign  treaty  a  trade  with 
some  domineering  private  interest,  and  many 
a  judgment  of  the  departments  or  the  courts 
a  mere  registration  of  the  will  of  some  com- 
mercial or  industrial  potentate  who  chances 


28       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

to  be  in  a  position  to  compel  action  advan- 
tageous to  himself. 

This  is  the  spirit  of  aggression,  individual 
as  against  individual,  to  curb  which  govern- 
ments, particularly  republican  governments, 
are  instituted  among  men.  When  such  gov- 
ernments abdicate  their  true  functions  and 
enlist  on  the  side  of  the  avaricious  and  pow- 
erful to  oppress  the  people  who  owe  them 
allegiance  and  who  have  a  right  to  look  to 
them  for  protection  from  this  very  evil,  the 
rule  of  force  and  fraud  is  substituted  for  that 
of  justice  and  honesty. 

Privilege  thus  gives  a  flavor  of  merchan- 
dising to  our  politics,  and  carries  all  of  the 
petty  and  detestable  methods  of  the  money 
grubber  into  the  highest  places  of  govern- 
ment. Privilege  in  Europe  sometimes  con- 
cerns itself  with  other  things,  but  Privilege 
in  America  never  has  a  thought  except  as 
to  gain.  Its  party  platforms,  its  political 
speeches,  its  executive  papers,  its  laws  and 
its  maxims,  support  and  lend  color  of 
truth  to  the  assertion  of  the  distinguished 
railroad  president  who  declared  recently  in 
an  interview,  that  the  dollar  is  the  one  thing 


THE  ABERRA  TION  OF  A  PEOPLE.      29 

sacred  to  Americans,  Privilege  pitches  all 
of  our  political  contests  and  discussions  in 
this  low  key,  from  which  there  is  rarely  a 
variation. 


VII. 
ON  A  LOW  PLANE. 

THE  fathers  of  the  republic  unhappily 
sought  to  compromise  the  question  of 
human  bondage;  but,  with  that  pitiful  excep- 
tion, they  formed  a  government  of  justice, 
equality  and  mutual  confidence,  which  was  to 
stand  forever  above  the  strife  and  turmoil  of 
the  people's  lives,  holding  the  scales  with  an 
even  hand,  protecting  and  encouraging  every 
lawful  enterprise  and  offering  no  advantage 
to  the  great  and  the  powerful  that  was  not 
open  also  to  the  humblest  citizen  in  the  land. 
Privilege  has  changed  all  this.  It  estab- 
lishes a  system  which  meddles  with  and 
oppresses  industry,  holds  out  false  hopes  of 
gain  to  the  many,  and  makes  certain  only 
the  profits  of  the  few.  By  unexampled 
abuses  of  the  taxing  power,  by  promises 
never  intended  to  be  observed,  by  sophistries 
and  falsehoods  so  obvious  that  even  their 
repetition  is  a  reflection  on  the  intelligence 
of  the  people,  Privilege  has  convinced 
30 


ON  A  LOW  PLANE.  3^ 

many  of  the  American  people  that  laws 
designed  to  oppress  most  men  for  the  benefit 
of  a  few  men  are  of  greater  value  to  a  repub- 
lic than  the  old  principles  of  justice  and 
equality.  By  these  means  also  Privilege  has 
convinced  many  of  the  American  people  that 
a  system  which  taxes  one  man  for  the  bene- 
fit of  another  man  is  to  be  credited  with  the 
wealth  of  a  bountiful  nature,  with  the  bless- 
ings of  providence  and  with  the  fruits  of  all 
industry,  in  a  nation  more  ambitious  and 
laborious  than  any  other  on  earth. 

Not  every  American  who  has  subscribed 
to  this  evil  doctrine  has  been  deluded  ; 
many  are  not  deceived.  The  mass  of  its 
supporters  may  be  honest,  but  many — some 
millions  of  them  —  are  arrayed  under  the 
banner  of  Privilege,  not  because  they  have 
been  misled,  not  because  they  are  ignorant 
of  the  injustice  of  the  proposition,  but  because 
they  think  that  in  one  way  or  another  they 
are  benefited  by  it,  and  because  they  do  not 
care  whom  or  how  many  it  may  oppress,  so 
long  as  they  can  figure  out  a  little  gain  for 
themselves. 

This    is   an    unpalatable  truth,   but   it   is 


32       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

truth.  Our  political  contests  show  it  ;  the 
utterances  of  our  party  leaders  show  it  ;  the 
actions  of  vast  numbers  of  our  voters  show 
it.  Political  battles  in  recent  years  have 
been  won  and  lost  by  the  shifting  of  this  ele- 
ment from  one  side  to  the  other.  It  is 
ready  to  vote  for  Privilege  if  it  can  be  con- 
vinced that  Privilege  is  able  and  willing  to 
do  all  that  it  promises.  It  has  no  higher 
motive  than  this.  It  has  no  other  concep- 
tion, even  of  its  own  welfare. 

Promises  of  dividends  and  fortunes  to 
one  class  are  no  more  alluring,  if  they  can 
be  fulfilled,  than  are  promises  of  wages  to 
another  class,  if  they  can  be  fulfilled.  There 
are  several  millions  of  Americans,  the 
descendants  and  successors  of  the  men  who 
established  the  doctrine  of  equal  rights,  who, 
on  more  than  one  occasion,  have  demon- 
strated their  willingness  to  accept  the  bribe 
of  Privilege  if,  by  any  ingenuity  of  its  own 
or  by  any  fortunate  circumstance,  Privilege 
can  make  it  appear  that  it  has  kept  its  part 
of  the  bargain. 

The  party  of  Privilege  bases  its  claim  to 
popular  favor  on   such    evidence   as  it  can 


ON  A  LOW  PL  A  NE.  33 

bring  to  the  support  of  its  contention  that  it 
divides  the  spoils  fairly.  The  party  nomin- 
ally opposed  to  Privilege  is  content  in  most 
places  with  the  production  of  such  proof  as 
it  can  find  that  the  division  is  unfair. 

On  this  low  plane  the  discussion  pro- 
ceeds, while  Privilege  as  such,  making  new 
conquests  of  important  outposts,  menaces 
the  very  citadel  of  liberty  itself. 


H 


VIII. 

A  QUESTION  OF  MORALS. 

ERE  is  a  question  of  morals  that 
demands  the  attention  of  every  honest 
man  —  a  question  that  must  be  settled,  and 
settled  right,  at  no  distant  day,  if  this  country 
is  to  remain  a  republic  in  anything  but  name. 
With  all  men  equal  before  the  law  we  are 
already  divided  into  two  classes,  one  that 
oppresses  and  one  that  is  oppressed.  Because 
this  infamy  has  been  successfully  practiced 
for  a  generation,  is  there  an  American  infat- 
uated enough  to  suppose  that  it  can  last  for- 
ever? Do  the  intelligent  and  patriotic  citi- 
zens of  the  republic,  who,  for  one  reason  or 
another,  have  winked  at  this  atrocity,  imag- 
ine that  it  can  end  in  anything  but  disaster  ? 
With  such  an  example  as  Privilege  thus 
sets  before  the  young,  no  one  need  be  sur- 
prised if  the  coming  generation  of  Ameri- 
cans shall  develop  the  most  colossal  scoun- 
drelism  that  the  world  ever  has  known.  All 
the  landmarks  are  down  ;  all  the  guide  posts 
34 


A  QUESTION  OF  MORALS.  35 

removed.  We  now  are  teaching  inequality 
and  not  equality  ;  we  are  showing  how 
much  better  it  is  to  be  unjust  and  rich  than 
it  is  to  be  just  and  poor  ;  we  are  holding 
up  the  government  as  a  victim  to  be  robbed 
or  a  robber  to  be  enlisted  on  our  side  when 
we  set  out  on  our  forays  against  our  fellow 
men. 

We  no  longer  draw  inspiration  from  the 
heroes  who  taught  equal  and  exact  justice 
and  who  bequeathed  to  us  a  republic  that  was 
to  be  always  the  best  hope  of  mankind.  The 
constitution  we  have  flouted,  the  golden  rule 
we  have  forgotten,  the  decalogue  we  have 
relegated  to  the  garret,  as  we  have  turned 
lightly  in  pursuit  of  the  golden  bait  offered 
by  men  who  have  made  Privilege  and  plun- 
der their  watchwords. 

What  do  we  say  to  the  youth  aoout  to 
enter  upon  the  serious  business  of  life  ?  Do 
we  assure  him  that  success  is  to  be  reached 
only  by  industry,  frugality  and  honesty  ? 
Not  at  all.  We  point  to  a  shorter  cut.  By 
our  example  we  tell  him  to  go  to  Congress 
and  beg  or  buy  a  law  that  will  enable  him  to 
tax  his  neighbor.     Do  we  say  to  the  aspir- 


3^       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

ing  boy  that  to  succeed  he  must  deserve  suc- 
cess ?  We  do  not.  We  point  to  the  men 
whom  Privilege  has  made  powerful,  and  we 
say  to  him,  Get  a  bounty,  or  a  subsidy  or 
an  appropriation. 

Do  we  hold  up  scrupulous  honesty  and 
undeviating  justice  as  the  things  most  to  be 
desired  and  most  likely  to  lead  to  fortune  ? 
Never.  We  say  to  the  lads  of  our  day, 
Seek  out  some  unfair  advantage  by  means 
of  a  wicked  law  and  then  get  rich  quickly. 
No  matter  if  you  do  have  to  bribe  and  bully 
your  way  to  success.  Wlio  cares  ?  You  will 
have  plenty  of  company,  and  if  you  are  a 
smart  rogue  3'ou  will  find  numerous  dull  but 
influential  rogues  who  will  assist  you. 

Do  we  refer  the  young  man  who  aspires 
to  political  honors  to  the  lives  and  precepts 
of  the  stalwart  heroes  who  made  the  repub- 
lic known  and  honored  around  the  world  ? 
No.  Our  present  system  says  to  him  as 
plainly  as  words  can  frame  a  thought : 
Never  mind  the  old  men  ;  they  were  anti- 
quated and  slow.  Take  off  your  hat  to  some 
selfish  interest  ;  prove  your  capacity  to 
serve   King   Iron,   King   Coal,   King  Silver, 


A  QUESTION  OF  MORALS.  37 

King  Copper,  King  Glass,  King  Sugar,  King 
Tin,  King  Salt,  King  Wool  and  King  Lum- 
ber;  and  then,  with  their  money  in  your 
pocket  and  a  He  upon  your  lips,  go  before 
the  people  whom  you  are  to  delude  and 
betray ! 

That  is  the  lesson  that  America  is  teach- 
mg  to-day  while  our  politicians  are  discuss- 
ing the  profit  and  loss  of  crime  ;  while 
our  newspapers  are  marshaling  statistical 
tables  on  either  side  of  immorality;  while 
good  men  are  footing  up  columns  and  mak- 
ing laborious  comparisons  between  the  vary- 
ing results  of  dishonesty ;  while  learned 
economists  are  toiling  through  dismal  pages 
and  chapters  of  useless  books,  called  forth 
by  the  pros  and  cons  of  oppression  ;  and 
while  even  the  most  courageous  reformers 
are  adjusting  their  scales  with  the  nicety  of 
an  apothecary,  to  measure  the  possible  dif- 
ference between  policies  that  they  know  to 
be  wrong  and  policies  that  they  know  to  be 
far  enough  from  right. 

That  is  the  lesson  that  Americans  are 
teaching  while  the  dreary  contest,  in  many 
respects   a  sham  battle,    goes    stupidly   on, 

428539 


3^       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

with  no  prospect  in  sight  but  disaster,  and 
no  certainty  that  complications  here  or  there 
may  not  arise  any  day  and  compel  for 
another  generation  an  abandonment  of  the 
entire  discussion. 


IX. 

PARTIES  OF  MORAL  IDEAS. 

WE  have  a  great  political  party  nomin- 
ally arrayed  against  Privilege,  which 
does  not  fully  represent  the  real  sentiment 
of  those  people  who  are  uncompromisingly 
hostile  to  the  idea.  It  has  enjoyed  the  sup- 
port of  this  element  in  the  past,  for  the  hope 
has  prevailed  that  eventually-  it  would  rise  to 
the  emergency  and  constitute  itself  the 
champion  of  popular  rights. 

It  will  not  be  denied  that  it  has  done 
much,  but  it  has  not  done  enough  ;  it  has 
yet  to  prove  its  capacity  to  adopt  a  moral 
idea  and  carry  it  to  a  triumphant  issue.  Its 
counsels  are  divided  ;  it  speaks  in  equivo- 
cal tones.  It  has  stood  resolutely  for  a  cur- 
tailment of  the  pretensions  of  Privilege,  and, 
at  no  little  cost  to  itself,  it  has  fought  a  good 
fight  for  popular  rights  on  grounds  of  expedi- 
ency. It  has  yet  to  demonstrate  its  ability 
to  take  higher  ground  and  to  pursue  the 
contest  on  the  broader  plane  of  good  morals. 
39 


40       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

It  has  carried  the  contest  to  a  point 
where  its  own  dishonest  and  self-seeking 
members  have  been  forced  to  reveal  their 
treachery  and  take  sides  openly  with  the 
enemy.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  it 
has  the  virtue  and  the  courage  to  cast  out 
these  false  friends,  and  by  the  pursuit  of  jus- 
tice for  the  sake  of  justice,  keep  in  its  ranks 
the  great  hosts  of  honest  men  already  there, 
and  win  from  the  thoughtless  or  the  doubt- 
ing recruits  enough  to  make  certain  the  ulti- 
mate triumph  of  the  right. 

It  was  the  boast  of  the  political  organiza- 
tion which  brought  about  the  destruction  of 
slavery,  that  it  was  a  party  of  great  moral 
ideas.  A  remnant  of  another  and  an  earlier 
political  organization  styled  itself  the  con- 
science Whigs.  There  was  a  good  deal  of 
cant  and  humbug  about  both  of  these  claims, 
but  for  each  there  was  a  certain  basis  in  fact. 
One  of  them,  at  least,  had  this  foundation, 
that  the  party  making  it  took  for  its  chief 
object  the  destruction  of  an  immoral  idea. 

When  a  true  party  of  anti- Privilege  takes 
the  field  in  this  country  it  will  have  a  better 
claim  to  the  title  of  a  party  of  great  moral 


PARTIES  OF  MORAL  IDEAS.  4^ 

ideas  than  any  other  that  ever  existed.  The 
anti-slavery  party  was  a  sectional  organiza- 
tion, made  up  of  men  who  had  no  possible 
pecuniary,  social,  personal  or  even  senti- 
mental interest  in  the  institution  whose 
destruction  it  sought.  It  did  not  prescribe 
morals  for  itself;  it  prescribed  them  for  other 
people.  In  all  this  land  there  were  not  a 
dozen  abolitionists  who  were  to  lose  a  far- 
thing by  abolition,  while  there  were  thou- 
sands of  abolitionists  who  hoped  to  profit  by 
it  in  one  way  or  another. 

The  abolitionists  called  themselves  a 
party  of  moral  ideas,  but  they  lacked  a  great 
deal  of  that  morality  which  first  conquers 
self  and  which  subdues  the  profitable  vices 
which  we  ourselves  practice.  They  may  be 
likened  to  persons  zealous  in  the  prosecution 
of  foreign  missions,  except  that  they  prose- 
lyted by  force  and  not  by  persuasion,  and 
that  they  hated  the  people  whom  they 
were  to  reform.  They  were  separated  from 
them  by  almost  impassable  barriers;  they 
had  no  possible  sympathy  with  them;  they 
were  not  similarly  situated.  By  accident 
slavery  was  a  southern  and  not  a  northern 


42       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

institution.  The  anti-slavery  party  of  the 
north  was  accidentally  right,  as  the  pro- 
slavery  party  of  the  south  was  accidentally 
wrong. 

It  is  vastly  different  with  the  party  that 
is  opposed  to  Privilege.  This  organization 
is  not  sectional;  it  is  national.  It  embraces 
within  its  membership  thousands  of  men 
who  at  one  time  or  another  have  believed,  or 
who  may  now  believe,  that  they  are  in  a 
position  to  profit  by  the  unjust  system  whose 
overthrow  they  seek.  Its  members  inhabit 
every  county  and  township  in  America. 
They  have  supporters  of  Privilege  for  neigh- 
bors and  associates;  they  meet  them  every- 
where, and,  in  the  main,  they  respect  them. 

It  was  practically  impossible  for  a  north- 
ern man  to  become  a  slave  owner;  he 
could  have  moved  to  the  south,  as  a  few  did, 
but  the  cost  of  the  change  was  too  great  for 
many  to  meet.  There  is  nothing  to  prevent 
the  average  member  of  the  party  of  anti- 
Privilege  from  availing  himself  of  the  unjust 
privileges  enjo3'ed  by  his  op})onents,  if  he 
be  so  disposed.  If  he  is  a  capitalist  and  the 
present  tariff  laws   do   not  suit  his  purpose, 


PARTIES  OF  MORAL  IDEAS.  43 

the  way  to  Congress  is  open  to  him.  If  he 
is  a  working  man,  he  may  easily  enlist  in  the 
ranks  of  protected  labor  and  delude  himself 
with  the  idea  that  he  is  receiving,  or  may 
sometime  receive,  some  of  the  plunder. 

Because  one-half  of  the  American  people 
have  resolutely  put  behind  them  all  the 
bribes  which  Privilege  offers,  it  may  be  said 
with  truth  that  their  party,  deficient  as  it  is 
in  many  respects,  is  the  moral  party  of  the 
day,  for  it  has  staked  its  existence  upon  the 
one  question  here  involved.  It  lives  or  dies 
by  that  issue. 

The  party  of  anti-Privilege  is  arrayed 
against  selfishness  and  injustice  which  have 
become  national,  if  not  dynastic.  To  achieve 
success  it  must  resist  all  the  allurements 
of  wealth  and  power;  it  must  maintain  its 
strength  through  good  report  and  through 
ill  report ;  it  must  inspire  its  members  not 
only  with  the  zeal  of  converts,  but  with  the 
certain  knowledge  of  right  which  belongs 
usually  only  to  the  tried  soldiers  of  faith. 
It  must  not  be  dismayed  by  defeat,  or  by 
the  treachery  of  pretended  friends,  or  by  the 
desertion  of  troops  of  supporters  who  have 


44       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

not  the  character  to  endure  privation  for 
the  rewards  which  conscience  alone  can  be- 
stow. In  a  word,  it  must  carry  through 
every  level  of  politics,  from  the  lowest  to  the 
highest,  the  doctrine  that,  no  matter  who 
may  profit  by  it,  the  practice  of  taxing  one 
man  for  the  benefit  of  another  man  is  wrong 
— wrong  in  morals,  wrong  in  politics,  wrong 
in  business,  wrong  in  government. 

This  wrong,  which  makes  evil  its  good 
and  which  proclaims  iniquity  as  its  highest 
and  noblest  aspiration,  has  invited  destruc- 
tion. It  will  not  fall  if  it  be  attacked  merely 
on  grounds  of  expediency,  or  of  policy,  or  of 
convenience.  It  must  go  down,  like  any  other 
immorality,  in  shame  and  disgrace,  van- 
quished by  the  righteous,  and  detested  in  its 
ruin  even  by  its  own  authors  and  dupes. 

It  cannot  be  overthrown  by  counter 
appeals  to  the  selfishness  of  men.  Its  foes 
must  recognize  it  as  it  is — the  most  formid- 
able enemy  that  the  republic  has  yet  en- 
countered, an  enemy  stronger  and  more  to 
be  dreaded  than  any  of  the  invading  hosts 
of  Britain  or  of  the  Confederacy.  Its  attract- 
iveness   must     not    be     underestimated     or 


PARTIES  OF  MORAL  IDEAS.  45 

denied.  Its  ability  and  its  willingness  to 
improve  the  worldly  condition  of  some  men 
must  not  be  belittled. 

Repulsive  morally,  its  blandishments  are 
too  numerous,  and  its  capacity  to  reward  good 
service  and  to  punish  opposition  is  too  easily 
demonstrated,  to  make  it  worth  while  for  any 
antagonist  to  misrepresent  its  power  or  to 
minimize  its  fascination.  It  must  be  assailed 
on  higher  ground  and  with  higher  motives. 
The  moral  sense  of  the  nation  alone  will 
prevail  against  it. 


OPPRESSOR  AND  OPPRESSED. 

ONCE  enlisted  in  the  struggle  against 
slavery,  the  moral  forces  of  the  republic 
demonstrated  the  inherent  weakness  of  all 
error  and  the  invincible  power  of  the  right. 
There  are  many  reasons  to  suppose  that,  if 
summoned  now  to  another  contest  possess- 
ing many  characteristics  in  common  with  the 
one  that  led  to  the  extinction  of  human  bond- 
age on  this  continent,  they  would  respond 
with  equal  spirit  and  energy. 

Appeals  to  the  American  conscience  that 
proceed  from  the  timorous  or  the  doubtful 
will  fall  upon  dull  ears;  there  have  been 
too  many  such  already.  The  call  must  come 
with  emphasis  from  men  who  neither  know 
nor  care  what  effect  the  utter  destruction  of 
a  great  wrong  will  have  upon  individuals, 
interests,  or  localities,  but  who  will  be  filled 
with  a  splendid  confidence  that  right-doing 
will  bring  its  sure  reward.  Even-handed 
justice  can  inflict  no  injury  upon  honest  men; 
46 


OPPRESSOR  AND  OPPRESSED.         47 

and  if  hardship  result  to  those  who  have 
profited  by  injustice,  it  will  be  insignificant 
in  comparison  with  that  which  they  have 
visited  upon  the  people  at  large. 

It  took  time  and  suffering  to  convince  the 
American  people  that  slavery  had  to  go. 
They  had  juggled  with  the  question  and 
compromised  with  wrong  for  so  long  a  period 
that  millions  of  them,  although  entirely  con- 
scious of  the  error,  were  nevertheless  incapa- 
ble of  supporting  a  policy  that  looked  to  its 
complete  extermination.  A  hundred  consid- 
erations were  urged  against  precipitate 
action.  But  there  came  a  time  when  it  was 
apparent  to  all  that  a  long  step  forward  must 
be  taken,  and  when  that  hour  struck  a 
man  was  found  who  had  the  wisdom  correctly 
to  interpret  the  popular  will,  and  the  firmness 
properly  to  execute  it. 

There  were  no  more  refinements  of  vil- 
lainy after  that.  From  that  moment  on 
until  the  last  shackle  was  broken,  no  man 
weighed  words  in  characterizing  slavery,  nor 
with  nicely  selected  phrases  attempted  to 
bewilder  the  people  as  to  the  fate  that  was 
reserved  for  it;  plain  speech  was  all    suffi- 


4S       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

cient  then.  The  doom  of  slavery  was  written 
on  every  starry  banner  and  was  echoed 
around  the  earth  from  the  smoking  muzzles 
of  a  thousand  guns. 

When  Mr.  Lincoln  came  to  deal  with 
slavery  as  slavery,  there  were  men  who  had 
followed  him  as  far  as  that,  who  then  turned 
back.  They  were  willing  to  check  slavery; 
they  were  willing  to  cripple  it;  they  were 
willing  to  strip  it  of  some  of  its  power;  but 
they  were  not  willing  to  have  it  destroyed. 

So  now  the  earnest  men  who  come  to  deal 
with  the  kindred  crime  of  Privilege  may 
expect  that,  when  their  serious  purpose  to 
tear  down  and  to  exterminate  is  made 
plain,  many  people  who  have  followed  them 
to  that  point  will  turn  back  in  affright. 
They  will  be  ready  to  compromise;  they 
will  agree  to  cripple  or  to  check  Privilege; 
they  will  propose  lower  percentages  of  theft; 
but  they  will  not  consent  to  the  destruction 
of  the  principle  itself. 

The  error  of  Privilege  in  America  is 
inherent  and  fundamental,  as  the  error  of 
slavery  was.  It  cannot  be  tolerated  even  in 
a  small  way,     A  small  robbery  is  as  obnox- 


OPPRESSOR  AND  OPPRESSED.         49 

ious  in  principle  as  a  large  robbery.  If  one 
man  may  be  taxed  a  small  amount  for  the 
benefit  of  another  man,  the  motive  and  the 
excuse  will  be  always  at  hand  to  increase 
the  imposition.  If  slavery  had  been  left 
untouched  in  some  districts,  or  if  the  blacks 
had  been  retained  in  bondage  a  part  of  the 
time  and  left  free  a  part  of  the  time,  the 
latent  spirit  of  injustice  would  have  asserted 
itself  in  a  demand  for  more  territory  and  for 
longer  periods  of  serfdom. 

As  these  states  could  not  remain  half  free 
and  half  slave,  so  now  the  people,  all  equal 
before  the  law,  cannot  much  longer  maintain 
toward  each  other  the  relationship  of  oppres- 
sors and  oppressed.  Privilege  must  go.  It 
is  not  enough  that  some  of  it  shall  go;  it 
must  go  to  the  remotest  fibre;  and  the  prin- 
ciple itself  must  be  made  hateful  to  the 
people  whom  it  has  deceived  and  plundered. 


T 


XI. 

THE   PRICE   OF   LIBERTY. 

HAT  the  prodigious  material  develop- 
ment of  the  American  people  has  been 
attended  by  some  loss  of  character,  will 
hardly  be  denied  by  any  one  familiar  with 
public  affairs. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  reclamation 
of  wildernesses,  the  conquest  of  savage 
aborigines,  the  prosecution  of  wars  at  home 
and  abroad,  the  upbuilding  of  states,  and  the 
countless  activities  and  aspirations  of  a  peo- 
ple of  unparalleled  energy  and  ambition, 
absorbed  public  attention  for  many  years, 
almost  to  the  exclusion  of  everything  else. 

The  American  of  fifty  years  ago  might 
doubt  many  things  which  were  self-evident, 
but  his  faith  in  his  government  amounted  to 
a  passion.  He  had  been  well  taught,  prob- 
ably over-taught,  on  that  point  in  an  era 
when  patriotism  and  egotism  were  in  some 
respects  interchangeable  terms,  and  when  no 
fact  and  no  argument  could  convince  him  that 
50 


THE  PRICE  OF  LIBERTY.  5^ 

the  sum  of  all  the  wisdom  of  the  ages  was 
not  comprised  in  the  institutions  which  he 
revered.  All  else  might  change  or  vanish, 
but  of  his  liberty,  of  the  beneficence  of  his 
government  and  of  the  equality  of  the  laws 
he  was  sure. 

The  difference  between  this  too  confiding 
man  and  the  American  of  to-day,  who  gen- 
erally is  distrustful  and  dissatisfied,  is  too 
remarkable  to  escape  notice.  The  change 
was  not  wrought  in  a  day  or  in  a  year  ;  it 
came  gradually  and  almost  imperceptibly. 
In  fancied  security  as  to  the  undeviating 
justice  of  his  government,  the  American's 
intense  party  spirit,  his  natural  buoyancy, 
and  his  disposition  to  regard  favorably  and 
not  to  scrutinize  too  closely  new  projects 
for  achieving  wealth  easily  and  speedily,  made 
him  a  particularly  gullible  victim  of  the 
self-seeker  and  wonder-worker  when  they 
appeared  on  the  scene.  He  had  learned  the 
story  of  liberty,  and  his  all-pervading  faith 
was  well  grounded,  but  he  had  forgotten — - 
what  the  fathers  had  not  failed  to  teach — 
that  eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of  it  all. 
Thus  preoccupied,  thus  torn  by  rancorous 


52       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

partisanship,  thus  lulled  into  fancied  security 
by  the  sonorous  oratory  of  the  period,  which 
he  accepted  without  qualification,  he  did  not 
heed,  and  he  certainly  did  not  fear,  the 
stealthy  approach  of  Privilege.  It  came  to 
him  under  high-sounding  phrases  and  with  a 
patriotic  garniture;  it  came  craftily  and 
persuasively.  It  did  not  avow  its  real  pur- 
pose; it  flattered  and  cajoled  its  intended 
victim;  it  asked  little  and  it  promised 
much.  It  did  not  awaken  the  spirit  of  greed 
with  a  rude  shock  or  a  loud  cry;  it  touched 
the  pocket  nerve  of  the  alert  and  crafty 
American  with  a  deft  hand,  reserving  for  the 
enthusiastic  and  unthinking  disciple  of 
equality  and  fraternity  the  noisier  manifesta- 
tions with  which  the  new  departure  was 
attended. 

Privilege  gained  a  foothold  in  America 
by  false  pretenses  of  patriotism  for  the  edi- 
fication of  the  masses  and  by  cunningly 
devised  suggestions  of  opportunity  to  indi- 
viduals of  nimbler  wit.  It  was  not  until 
another  generation  appeared  upon  the  stage, 
a  generation  that  was  confronted  by  the 
momentous   consequences   of   the  errors  of 


THE  PRICE  OF  LIBERTY.  53 

the  fathers,  and  by  which  their  mistakes 
were  atoned  for  in  blood  and  agony,  that 
Privilege  ventured  to  assert  itself.  The  sav- 
age greed  of  a  class  long  tolerated  and 
pampered  through  a  misapprehension  of  its 
real  purpose,  was  shamelessly  avowed  at  a 
time  when  all  that  was  heroic  and  unselfish 
in  the  American  character  was  arrayed  in 
defense  of  the  republic.  Under  the  stress 
of  war  the  government  delivered  into  the 
hands  of  Privilege  the  people  to  whom  it 
had  appealed  in  the  first  alarm  of  avowed 
treason  and  rebellion. 

It  was  then  that  fifty  years  of  guarded 
instruction  in  the  art  of  perverting  public 
laws  to  private  ends  brought  forth  a  swarm- 
ing host,  every  member  of  which  had  some 
project  for  his  own  enrichment  that  depended 
upon  the  oppression  of  his  fellow  men. 

Privilege's  first  sweeping  triumph  in 
America  was  the  passage  of  the  protective 
tariff  bill  of  1862.  That  was  the  summer 
of  Fair  Oaks,  Mechanicsville,  the  Chicka- 
hominy  Marshes,  Chantilly,  Malvern  Hill, 
and  the  second  Manassas;  the  summer  also 
of  Lexington,  Donelson,  Henry  and  Shiloh. 


54       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

A  million  of  men  were  in  arms  contending 
against  the  idea,  then  struggling  for  recog- 
nition, that  it  was  right  for  one  man  to 
deprive  many  men  of  the  fruits  of  their  toil. 

A  hundred  thousand  new-made  graves, 
stretching  in  yellow  lines  from  the  Lower 
Mississippi  to  the  Potomac,  attested  the  de- 
votion of  a  great  people.  The  sword  ruled 
the  land.  Every  hamlet  was  a  camp,  and 
the  drum  beat  became  a  monotony  as  the 
tramping  hundreds  and  thousands  hurried 
away.  Surely,  if  the  mighty  spirit  thus  en- 
listed on  the  side  of  right  could  be  caught 
and  tamed  to  the  will  of  a  master  in  chicane, 
it  were  well  worth  while  ! 

The  protective  tariff  bill  of  1864  was 
passed  without  debate  in  either  house  of 
congress,  and  almost  without  amendment. 
It  embodied  every  selfish  device  that  the 
human  mind  could  suggest.  It  was  the  most 
stupendous  measure  of  taxation  ever  known 
on  this  planet.  Justified  at  the  time  only 
by  the  existence  of  war,  it  nevertheless  made 
public  revenue  a  secondary  object  and,  in 
some  notorious  respects,  was  wholly  for 
plunder. 


THE  PRICE  OF  LIBERTY.  55 

It  had  been  concocted  in  committee  ex- 
actly as  the  bill  of  1862  had  been  concocted. 
The  people  were  not  heard;  no  man  ap- 
peared in  their  interest.  The  man  who 
wanted  to  tax  his  fellow  citizens  had  but  to 
signify  the  desire.  No  avarice  was  too  great 
to  meet  instant  indorsement;  whatever  tax 
this  man  or  that  man  had  the  hardihood  to 
demand,  that  tax  was  laid  by  a  body  that 
was  quick  to  do  the  bidding  of  Privilege, 

Thus  constructed,  the  bill  was  presented 
to  Congress  by  a  man  who,  ashamed  of  his 
own  work,  apologized  for  it,  pronouncing  it 
the  most  cruel  burden  ever  inflicted  upon  a 
nation,  and  pledged  his  own  and  his  party's 
faith  that  the  increased  taxes,  public  and 
private,  should  be  remitted  as  soon  as  the 
war  should  cease. 

That  was  a  generation  ago,  and  substan- 
tially this  same  tariff  was  in  force  in  1890, 
when  another  congress  given  over  wholly  to 
the  service  of  Privilege,  added  5,  10,  20  and 
50  per  cent  to  schedules  that  had  been  con- 
sidered crushing  in  time  of  war. 


XII. 

TWO  AMERICAN   OLIGARCHIES. 

WHEN  the  question  of  human  slavery 
had  been  discussed  in  every  conceiv- 
able phase  for  more  than  a  generation,  as  the 
question  of  Privilege  now  has  been  discussed, 
it  was  found  that  the  monstrous  error  was 
incurable.  It  could  not  be  reformed;  it  could 
not  be  circumscribed;  it  could  not  be  rend- 
ered harmless;  it  could  not  be  modified;  it 
could  not  be  concealed.  Convicted  in  the 
high  court  of  reason,  it  sought  refuge  in  one 
falsehood  after  another  until  at  last,  with 
desperate  obstinacy,  it  threw  off  all  disguises, 
and,  appealing  to  the  sword,  perished  by  the 
sword. 

Slavery  was  a  hereditary  wrong;  so  is 
protection.  The  generation  that  now  is 
oppressing  the  American  people  under  cover 
of  the  tariff  and  kindred  abuses  was  reared 
to  injustice.  The  right  to  rob  has  been 
handed  down  from  fathers  who  had  shame- 
faced excuses  for  their  system,  to  sons  who 
56 


nVO  AMERICAN  OLIGARCHIES.        57 

never  knew  anything  else  and  who  believe 
that  it  is  right  for  one  man  to  tax  other 
men. 

It  is  idle  to  suppose  that  these  hereditary 
beneficiaries  of  wrong-doing  can  be  won  over 
by  argument,  or  by  appeals  to  reason  and 
conscience.  Their  point  of  view  is  not  that 
of  their  victims.  They  cannot  be  made  to 
yield  by  persuasion  or  by  threats.  They 
will  argue  the  matter  gladly  at  any  length; 
and,  if  they  weary  of  the  iteration  of  false- 
hood and  folly,  they  have  money  wrung  from 
the  people  with  which  to  hire  attorneys  and 
newspapers  to  take  up  the  strain  where  they 
leave  off.  While  argument  is  prolonged  the 
oppression  continues.  They  do  not  fear 
abstractions;  they  do  fear  action.  They 
will  remit  no  tax;  they  will  relinquish  no 
plunder ;  they  will  abolish  no  abuse.  There 
can  be  no  relief  from  their  exactions  that  is 
not  extorted  from  them  by  their  victims. 

Things  came  to  such  a  pass  in  the  days 
of  slavery  that  no  legislation  on  any  subject 
could  be  entered  upon  unless  the  slave  oli- 
garchy were  taken  into  account.  It  had 
established  a  power  that    was    co-equal    in 


58       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

some  respects  with  that  of  the  government 
itself.  So  now  the  tariff  oligarchy  rules,  and 
Americans  who  go  to  Washington  and  with 
uplifted  hand  swear  solemnly  to  support  the 
republic  and  its  laws,  hasten  to  make  their 
peace  with  this  despotic  power  and  straight- 
way enter  into  its  service  and  forget  their 
oaths. 

The  tariff  oligarchy  rules  this  land.  At 
its  order  taxes,  prices,  industries,  wages, 
politicians,  rise  or  fall.  At  its  command 
public  expenditures  increase  or  decrease;  it 
fills  the  treasury  or  it  empties  it;  it 
employs  labor  or  it  starves  it,  as  political 
exigencies  demand.  Its  interests  determine 
every  policy  that  is  adopted.  Few  bills  of 
any  importance  ever  reach  the  president  for 
signature  that  have  not  at  some  stage  received 
the  approval  of  this  odious  power.  Pen- 
sions, public  improvements,  silver  and  other 
financial  legislation,  bounties,  subsidies,  trea- 
ties, appropriations  of  every  description  — 
all  the  things  with  which  Congress  con- 
cerns itself — represent  no  longer  the  ascer- 
tained will  or  the  undoubted  interests  of  the 
people;    they  indicate  and  measure  the  bar- 


Tiro  AMERICAN  OLIGARCHIES.        59 

gains  and  bribes  that  Tariff  has  been  able  to 
effectuate. 

The  tariff  oligarchy,  like  the  slave  oli- 
garchy, is  a  compact  power  that  is  formidable 
because  of  the  numbers  that  it  deludes,  the 
numbers  that  it  silences  and  the  numbers 
that  it  involves  with  itself  in  crime.  Men 
having  wicked  schemes  to  promote  reckon  no 
more  with  the  people,  but  with  Tariff.  If 
Tariff  finds  in  it  an  opportunity  to  attach  a 
congressional  district  or  a  state  to  its  follow- 
ing. Tariff  assents  and  the  bill  becomes  a  law. 
If  there  is  no  advantage  for  Tariff  in  a  mea- 
sure it  dies,  no  matter  how  meritorious  it 
may  be,  because  Tariff  rules  this  land.  Its 
voice  is  the  voice  of  authority  to-day. 

Tariff  stands,  as  slavery  stood,  ever  with 
a  bribe  in  one  hand  to  entice  w'cak  and  cor- 
rupt men  to  its  side.  Tariff  stands,  as  slav- 
ery stood,  ever  with  a  bludgeon  in  the  other 
hand  to  intimidate  cowardly  men  into  its 
service.  It  is  not  a  thing  that  the  masses  of 
the  people  are  attached  to.  A  few  hundred 
lawless  men  are  the  chief  beneficiaries  of  the 
system,  exactly  as  a  few  hundred  desperate 
men    were    the  chief     beneficiaries    of   the 


6o       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

slavery  system.  The  one  coterie  holds  the 
honor  and  safety  of  the  republic  as  lightly 
as  did  the  other.  When  slavery  could  not 
rule  it  sought  to  destroy.  Tariff  has  mani- 
fested the  same  malignant  spirit,  and  only 
awaits  a  better  opportunity  to  outdo  slavery 
itself  in  the  most  tragic  of  its  roles. 


XIII. 

SLOTH  AND  WASTE. 

'T^HE  enormous  waste  of  the  protective 
■^  tariff  is  not  the  least  of  the  objections 
that  may  be  urged  against  it.  It  took  four 
years  of  war  and  a  political  and  social  revolu- 
tion to  convince  the  slave  owners  of  the 
wastefulness  of  the  system  to  which  they 
clung  with  so  much  tenacity.  The  two  wrongs 
bear  as  striking  a  resemblance  to  each  other 
in  this  respect  as  they  do  in  many  others. 

Slavery  was  wasteful  because  it  estab- 
lished a  patriarchal  society  not  in  keeping 
with  modern  ideas ;  because  it  necessitated 
large  expenditures  of  time  and  money  for 
political  purposes ;  because  its  effect  upon 
free  labor  was  injurious ;  because  it  deprived 
many  people  of  an  incentive  to  thrift;  be- 
cause it  was  less  productive  than  the  expense 
of  maintaining  it  demanded,  and  because 
it  retarded  the  general  development  of  the 
country  in  which  it  prevailed. 

Protection  is  wasteful  for  nearly  the  same 
6i 


Cz       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

reasons.  It  teaches  labor  of  the  most 
degraded  type  to  look  for  its  reward  to  leg- 
islation rather  than  to  industry  and  frugality. 
It  causes  thousands  of  manufacturers  to 
devote  to  political  manipulation  time  and 
money  which  might  much  more  profitably 
be  devoted  to  business.  It  leads  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  unproductive  industries  in  places 
where  the  conditions  are  unfavorable  to  their 
success.  It  is  a  prodigious  burden  on  the 
consumer ;  and,  as  it  is  more  and  more  in 
need  of  defense,  it  calls  for  constantly 
increasing  contributions  from  its  dupes  as 
well  as  from  its  beneficiaries,  to  be  used  in 
controlling  elections  and  in  bribing  con- 
gresses. 

The  few  great  slave  owners  who  managed 
to  control  the  business,  politics,  society  and 
religion  of  the  south,  were  loyally  assisted 
by  a  great  host  of  smaller  slave  owners  who 
were  almost  as  much  afflicted  by  the  system 
as  the  slaves  themselves.  They  thought 
they  were  benefitted,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  were  injured,  as  they  now  see  plainly 
enough.  The  great  mass  of  small  manufac- 
turers in  America,   many  of  them  the  most 


SLOTH  AND  WASTE.  63 

intolerant  supporters  of  protectionism,  are 
victimized  by  the  institution  which  they 
defend  with  so  much  vehemence.  The 
planter  who  boasted  the  possession  of  two, 
three  or  five  slaves,  was  likely  to  be  most 
bitter  in  persecution  of  his  opponents,  just 
as  to-day  we  find  that  the  small  manufac- 
turer in  many  places  exercises  the  most 
exasperating  terrorism  over  the  few  poorly 
paid  men  that  he  employs,  and  is  most  intol- 
erant of  any  interference  with  the  privilege 
which  he  enjoys.  As  the  chief  profits  of 
slavery  lay  in  the  social  and  political  power 
that  it  gave  to  a  few  men,  so  the  greatest 
advantage  that  protection  confers  upon  its 
supporters  is  monopolized  by  the  compara- 
tively few  who  are  thus  enabled  not  only  to 
control  many  lines  of  business  but  to  dom- 
inate the  government  of  a  great  nation. 

The  effect  of  protection  is  to  discourage 
enterprise  of  every  legitimate  sort ;  the 
effect  of  slavery  was  the  same.  Protec- 
tionism puts  a  premium  upon  sloth  and 
ignorance ;  so  did  slavery.  Protectionism 
says  to  the  manufacturer:  "Here  is  a  corn- 
ered market,  whose  victims  must  buy  of  you. 


64       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

Your  customers  and  your  profits  are  assured  ; 
you  have  no  occasion  to  try  new  processes, 
to  invest  in  new  machines  or  to  pay  atten- 
tion to  the  progress  of  the  age.  If  foreign- 
ers take  advantage  of  important  discoveries 
in  science  and  mechanics,  and  at  length  are 
able  to  compete  with  you  in  spite  of  the 
tariff,  we  will  add  twenty  per  cent  or  forty 
per  cent  to  your  protection." 

Slavery  said  the  same  thing  to  the 
planter,  in  a  different  way.  It  told  him  to 
raise  but  one  crop,  to  resist  to  the  utmost 
the  mighty  pressure  of  civilization  and 
humanity,  and  to  give  no  heed  to  men  who 
suggested  new  ideas  in  production  or  in 
mechanics.  But,  as  improvements  come  in 
spite  of  protection,  improvements  came  in 
spite  of  slavery.  The  cotton  gin,  invented 
by  a  New  Englander,  quadrupled  the  wealth 
of  the  south  in  a  year.  Slavery  could  not 
have  produced  it ;  yet  slavery  stole  it,  and, 
besides  refusing  to  pay  its  inventor  for  his 
discovery,  it  used  the  wonderful  instrument 
to  fortify  with  wealth  and  respectability  its 
own  thieving  institution. 

Slavery    could    have    exchanged    every 


SLOTH  AND  WASTE.  65 

negro  in  the  south  for  Whitney's  machine 
and  made  money  by  the  operation.  There 
have  been  inventions  since  that  day  that 
would  have  justified  protected  manufactur- 
ers in  remitting  every  cent  of  their  wicked 
impositions  upon  the  people,  but  they  have 
coolly  appropriated  the  discoveries,  employ- 
ing women  and  children,  as  the  labor  of  men 
has  been  displaced  by  machinery,  and  have 
eagerly  sought  new  fields  for  plunder. 

Protection  invents  nothing,  as  slavery 
invented  nothing.  The  minds  of  many 
sagacious  men  are  continually  employed 
devising  ways  and  means  of  overcoming  the 
unjust  advantages  which  protection  confers 
upon  its  beneficiaries ;  and  when  success 
crowns  their  efforts  and  by  new  methods 
production  is  cheapened,  protectionism  seizes 
upon  the  invention  and  claims  that  the 
cheapness  thus  obtained  was  what  it  was 
striving  for  all  the  time. 

Slavery  was  wasteful  also  because  it  was 
carried  as  a  political  issue  at  great  expense 
into  regions  where  it  could  not  possibly  exist 
as  an  industrial  system.  Protection  is  sim- 
ilarly wasteful,  because,  by  appealing  to  the 
5 


66       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

cupidity  and  prejudice  of  men,  it  leads  to 
the  establishment  of  hot  house  industries  in 
sections  where  they  cannot  naturally  be  con- 
ducted at  a  profit,  and  then  points  to  their 
languishing  condition  as  a  sufficient  reason 
why  the  people  should  be  taxed  at  an 
increased  rate  for  their  maintenance. 

It  is  a  fact  that  must  be  apparent  to  any 
reflective  mind  that,  if  the  manufacturers  of 
this  country  had  expended  in  efforts  to 
improve  their  processes  and  widen  their  mar- 
kets the  time  and  money  that  they  have 
devoted  to  the  beguilement  and  corruption  of 
the  people,  they  would  have  been  more  self- 
reliant,  their  prosperity  would  have  been 
more  substantial,  and  a  false  system,  ever  in 
danger  of  tottering  to  destruction,  would  not 
have  been  brought  into  existence. 

So  long  as  the  south  leaned  upon  slavery 
the  comparatively  few  great  beneficiaries  of 
that  institution  persuaded  all  the  people, 
whether  slave  owners  or  not,  that  without 
slavery  they  could  not  exist.  Slavery  was 
the  tyrant  of  politics,  the  patron  of  industry, 
the  ruler  of  society,  the  arbiter  of  commerce, 
and    the  supreme   authority  in  the  church. 


SLOTH  AND  WASTE.  67 

To-day  it  is  a  memory  only,  and  there  are 
in  the  southern  states  more  enlightened 
politics,  more  productive  industry,  a  more 
wholesome  society,  a  wider  commerce  and  a 
more  perfect  religion. 


XIV. 

EASY  INFAMY  OF  PRIVILEGE. 

THERE  was  a  time  when,  if  the  slave 
owners  of  the  south  had  been  willing 
to  admit  that  their  system  was  wrong  and 
that  it  was  an  affront  to  nineteenth  century 
civilization,  they  might  have  procured  a 
hundred  years'  lease  of  life  for  it  by  keeping 
its  infamies  within  bounds  and  sparing  man- 
kind the  infliction  of  its  intolerable  encroach- 
ments. But  such  a  thing  came  at  last  to  be 
impossible.  Led  on  by  audacious  men 
filled  with  the  lust  of  power,  hosts  of  the 
smaller  slave  owners  and  multitudes  who 
owned  no  slaves  at  all,  were  hurried  into  a 
position  from  which  nothing  but  a  successful 
war  could  rescue  them  and  their  cause. 
Their  war  did  not  succeed,  and  their  cause 
perished. 

Time  was  when  the  protected  interests  in 
this  country,  with  a  few  reasonable  conces- 
sions to  public  opinion,  might  have  ordered 
matters    so    that    they   could   have   retained 
68 


EASY  INFAMY  OF  PRIVILEGE.         69 

their  peculiar  abuse  for  a  generation  longer. 
But  the  spirit  of  concession  was  not  in  them. 
The  same  consuming  greed,  the  same  burn- 
ing desire  for  political  and  commercial 
power,  that  lured  the  slave  owners  to  ruin, 
beckons  them  also  to  destruction.  The  time 
came  when  the  assumptions  of  the  slave 
owners  were  not  compatible  with  American 
freedom  and  self-respect  —  when  they 
became  a  menace  to  society  at  large — and 
from  that  day  compromises  with  slavery 
were  impossible.  The  institution  was 
doomed.  The  time  is  at  hand  when  the 
claims  of  the  beneficiaries  of  Privilege  are 
not  to  be  entertained  by  Americans  who 
value  the  title  of  freemen,  for  they  are  at 
war  with  the  fundamentals  of  liberty,  and 
their  further  extension  can  be  accomplished 
only  by  the  sacrifice  of  principles  dear  to 
every  loyal  heart.  That  institution  likewise 
is  doomed. 

In  the  original  scheme  of  protectionism, 
as  in  that  of  slavery,  no  account  was  taken 
of  its  victims.  As  slavery  ignored  the 
human  chattel,  so  protectionism  ignored  the 
consumer.     The   slavery   question  was    dis- 


7o       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

cussed  for  many  years  without  taking  the 
slave  into  consideration  at  all.  What  he 
thought  about  it  was  not  to  the  point. 
When,  finally,  as  a  last  resort  of  desperate 
men,  it  was  maintained  by  the  slave  owner 
that  slavery  was  best  for  the  victim,  the 
proposition  was  not  made  to  the  slave  him- 
self but  to  free  men  hundreds  of  miles  away 
whose  votes  were  sought. 

No  one  presumed  to  ask  the  slave's  opin- 
ion of  that  idea.  He  was  unheard ;  it  was 
a  crime  to  teach  him  to  read ;  his  word  was 
not  good  in  a  court  of  law ;  he  was  not  a 
party  to  the  contest,  although,  in  one  view 
of  the  case,  it  concerned  him  alone.  In  like 
manner  Privilege  has  ignored  its  victims  for 
many  years. 

In  such  miserable  tracts,  pamphlets  or 
apologies  as  have  been  published  in  the  in- 
terest of  protectionism  the  consumer  never 
is  mentioned,  and  the  aim  of  the  proposed 
beneficiaries  is  to  convince  the  world  that 
there  is  no  such  person.  Of  late  the  con- 
sumer has  come  into  court,  where  it  has  been 
found  that  he  reads  and  writes,  that  he  is  a 
competent  witness,  and  that   he   also  votes. 


EASY  INFAMY  OF  PRIVILEGE.         7 1 

In  his  indignant  presence  Privilege  has  awak- 
ened to  the  fact  that  its  victims  must  be 
taken  into  account,  and,  with  unparalleled 
impudence,  it  has  done  a  thing  that  slavery 
never  did — it  has  gone  before  the  men  whom 
it  has  oppressed  and,  with  the  older  slavery's 
wicked  lie  on  its  lips,  it  has  told  these  plun- 
dered millions  that  the  system  is  really  main- 
tained for  their  benefit;  that,  instead  of  being 
for  a  few,  it  is  for  all! 

Privilege  is  at  the  bar  of  public  opinion 
on  trial  for  its  life ;  it  is  to  be  judged  and 
punished  for  what  it  tried  to  do,  as  well  as 
for  what  it  has  done.  It  started  out  defi- 
antly to  subject  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
to  the  oppression  of  a  few.  When  first  chal- 
lenged it  admitted  its  purpose  and  justified 
it.  It  now  crawls  and  cringes  before  the 
men  whom  it  sought  to  enslave  and  asks 
them  in  God's  name  to  sustain  it,  for  it  was 
designed  for  their  benefit. 

Slavery  had  many  sins  to  answer  for,  but 
it  spared  the  world  an  exhibition  of  such 
scoundrelism  as  this.  Slavery  did  not  go 
down  on  its  knees  and,  with  tears  in  its  eyes, 
entreat  the  victims  of  the  lash  and  the  blood- 


72       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

hounds  to  join  its  legions  and  fight  for  an- 
other cycle  of  servitude.  The  point  at  which 
slavery  stopped  without  resource  has  been 
clearly  overreached  by  the  easy  infamy  of 
Privilege. 


XV. 

PROTECTIONISM'S   BRIBES. 

PROTECTIONISM  proceeds  on  the  the- 
ory that  every  man  has  his  price.  It 
buys  industries;  it  buys  individuals;  it  buys 
states;  it  buys  congresses.  Vote-buying  is 
the  natural  and  necessary  result  of  a  policy 
that  begins  with  bribery,  is  sustained  by 
bribery,  and  reaches  its  most  notable  tri- 
umphs through  bribery. 

Protection  itself  is  but  a  monstrous  bribe. 
It  was  demanded  by  and  paid  to  certain  in- 
terests in  Massachusetts  and  Pennsylvania  in 
i860  as  the  price  of  their  support  of  a  new 
and  at  that  time  a  virtuous  party.  Perceiv- 
ing the  necessity  of  having  reinforcements. 
Privilege  thus  intrenched,  bribed  lumber  and 
salt,  copper  and  glass,  crockery  and  cutlery, 
wool  and  sugar.  Recognizing  also  the  im- 
portance of  fortifying  its  injustice  still  fur- 
ther, it  offered  a  colossal  bribe  to  labor  and 
another  to  agriculture,  well  knowing  that  it 
could  not  pay,  but  hoping  to  secure  by  de- 
73 


74       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

ception  what  it  could  not  otherwise  obtain 
at  all. 

Protectionism  said  to  labor  :  "Vote  my 
ticket  and  I  will  raise  your  wages  out  of  the 
plunder  which  unjust  laws  enable  me  to  take 
from  agriculture."  For  a  time  agriculture 
was  appeased  by  railroad  building  at  the  ex- 
pense of  public  funds  and  public  lands;  and 
when  it  became  restive,  protectionism  said 
to  the  farmer :  "  I  perceive  that  all  this 
time  you  have  been  overlooked.  Singularly 
enough,  nobody  has  thought  of  applying  our 
admirable  system  to  you.  Manufacturers 
and  their  employes  are  protected  and  pros- 
perous. You  are  poor.  If  you  will  vote  my 
ticket  I  will  lay  a  tariff  on  wheat,  and  corn, 
and  rye,  and  barley,  and  eggs.  The  tariff 
has  made  us  rich,  we  admit.  It  will  do  the 
same  by  you." 

Wherever  an  industry  or  an  individual  is 
found  clinging  to  protectionism  for  profit, 
that  industry  or  that  individual  has  been 
bribed.  Wherever  an  industry  or  an  indi- 
vidual is  found  clinging  to  protectionism  for 
imaginary  profit,  that  industry  or  that  indi- 
vidual has  been  duped. 


PROTECTIONISM'S  BRIBES.  75 

Protectionism  buys  the  great  and  the 
small.  It  scorns  nothing  but  justice  and 
honesty.  The  giants  of  iron  and  steel, 
lumber  and  copper,  coal  and  glass,  make 
common  cause  with  the  midgets  of  pearl 
buttons  and  tin  cups.  Nothing  that  will 
steal  and  will  help  it  to  steal,  be  its  power 
ever  so  puny,  is  too  insignificant  to  be  bar- 
gained with. 

Every  selfish  interest,  every  corrupt 
scheme,  every  cozening  industry,  every  ag- 
gregation of  capital,  that  can  carry  into  poli- 
tics any  contribution  of  votes  or  money  in 
return  for  an  unjust  law,  allies  itself  with  pro- 
tectionism naturally  and  easily. 

When  a  hostile  interest,  such  as  silver 
mining,  becomes  troublesome,  it  is  bribed  by 
a  special  law  regardless  of  its  effect  upon  the 
country,  and  in  return  for  the  favor  thus  ex- 
tended, its  representatives  are  expected  to 
indorse  with  their  votes  the  whole  fabric  of 
Privilege. 

As  it  is  becoming  more  and  more  difficult 
to  hold  the  silver  producing  states  of  the  far 
west  in  line  in  support  of  a  system  that  bears 
upon  them  with  particular  hardship,  we  may 


76       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

look  for  a  more  than  ordinarily  desperate 
bargain  soon,  for  the  silver  party  is  not  be 
trifled  with,  and  if  Privilege  gains  its  support 
it  will  be  at  the  sacrifice  on  its  part  of  every 
principle  of  sound  finance  that  it  ever  has 
entertained. 

There  is  a  prospect  also  that  other  west- 
ern interests  naturally  oppressed  by  the  pol- 
icy of  Privilege  will  soon  be  afforded  an 
opportunity  to  consider  a  bribe  in  the  form 
of  a  great  national  irrigation  scheme,  by 
means  of  which  it  is  expected  that  both  their 
morality  and  their  self-interest  will  be  ap- 
peased. 

From  the  bribery  and  attempted  bribery  of 
whole  industries,  trades  and  occupations,  of 
districts,  states  and  sections,  to  the  purchase  of 
the  votes  of  needy  or  depraved  Americans,  is  a 
step  that  offers  no  obstacle  to  the  promoters 
of  Privilege.  The  bait  that  this  system  holds 
out  to  capital  is  unfair  laws.  The  bait  that 
it  offers  its  deluded  victim  is  a  bank  note. 
At  one  end  of  the  scale  of  bribery  is  the  man 
of  means  considering  the  question,  "Will 
this  wrong-doing  pay  ?"  At  the  other  end 
is  the  wretch  in  whose  mind  may  linger  some 


PROTECTIONISM'S  BRIBES.  77 

memory  of  a  better  citizenship,  considering 
the  question  as  he  fingers  the  miserable  bribe 
offered  for  his  vote,   "  Does  it  pay?  " 

We  need  not  wonder  at  the  great  corrup- 
tion funds  employed  by  protectionism  in  the 
so-called  doubtful  states,  for  an  institution 
born  in  the  greed  of  a  class  and  nurtured  in 
bribery  must  at  the  last,  where  universal 
suffrage  prevails,  depend  for  its  life  upon  its 
ability  to  purchase  the  support  of  the  indi- 
vidual. 


XVI. 

AMERICAN  PAUPER  LABOR. 

THE  relation  that  Privilege  bears  to  labor 
has  been  greatly  obscured  by  the  pal- 
pable dishonesty  and  timidity  with  which  the 
politicians  of  the  country  have  treated  the 
question. 

According  to  the  defenders  of  the  protec- 
tive tariff  system,  Privilege  bestows  every 
blessing  that  American  labor  enjoys.  With- 
out Privilege  for  others,  labor  starves :  with 
Privilege  for  others,  labor  is  employed  and 
contented.  On  the  other  hand,  too  many 
of  the  opponents  of  the  protective  system 
deny  that  Privilege  exercises  any  influence 
whatever  upon  labor.  They  hold  that  Priv- 
ilege is  a  burden  resting  upon  all  the  peo- 
ple and  that  its  benefits  are  enjoyed  only  by 
the  few  employers  of  labor  who  are  able  to 
take  advantage  of  it — which  is  true  as  far 
as  it  goes,  but  it  does  not  go  far  enough. 
The  deeper  and  more  far-reaching  effects  of 
the  system  usually  are  lost  sight  of. 
78 


AMERICAN  PA  UPER  LABOR.  79 

It  may  as  well  be  admitted  that  Privilege 
exerts  a  very  powerful  influence  upon  labor. 
It  would  be  amazing,  indeed,  if  a  system 
costing  the  American  people  so  much  in 
money  and  self  respect  operated  only  to  the 
advantage  of  the  capitalist  and  had  no  effect 
upon  the  lives  of  the  masses.  Whether  the 
fruits  of  the  system  so  far  as  labor  is  con- 
cerned are  worth  what  they  cost,  and  whether 
they  are  such  as  the  republic  can  afford  to 
encourage  much  longer,  are  another  matter. 

When  the  powerful  assistance  of  the 
United  States  government  is  extended  to  a 
private  enterprise,  we  may  be  sure  that  a 
partnership  so  radically  at  variance  with  our 
earlier  conceptions  of  the  republic  will  affect 
nearly  or  remotely  the  lives  of  a  great  many 
men.  With  this  assistance  Privilege  has 
established  here  a  government  by  manufac- 
turers and,  at  the  expense  of  the  whole  peo- 
ple, has  stimulated  manufacturing  enterprises 
vastly  beyond  the  needs  of  the  country.  It 
has  drawn  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars 
from  other  and  naturally  more  profitable  uses, 
and  concentrated  them  in  industries,  many 
of   which   are   unneeded  and  most  of  which 


So       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

are  at  times  feverishly  stimulated  to  activity 
that  has  no  health,  and  therefore  no  perma- 
nency. In  like  manner  it  has  attracted 
toward  the  manufacturing  centers  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  working  men,  who  have  been 
eager  to  secure  their  share  of  the  plunder 
which  they  have  not  failed  to  perceive  is 
conferred  by  unjust  laws  and  often  secured 
in  their  name.  Not  a  few  of  these  men  have 
been  drawn  from  other  American  industries, 
but  by  far  the  greater  number  of  them  have 
come  from  abroad. 

Immigration  to  the  United  States  during 
the  last  twenty  years  has  amounted  to  more 
than  ten  millions.  While  many  of  the  new 
arrivals  have  been  desirable,  most  of  them  of 
late  have  been  of  a  type  which  cannot  be 
regarded  with  much  favor.  Demanding 
special  advantages  for  itself  in  the  name  of 
labor,  Privilege  has  crowded  the  steerages 
of  steamships  with  the  cheapest  labor  of 
Europe  and  placed  it  in  direct  competition 
with  the  very  American  labor  which  it  has 
professed  to  befriend. 

It  is  not  possible  to  ascertain  the  propor- 
tion of  immigrants  to  the  United  States  in 


AMERICAN  PA  UPER  LABOR.  S i 

the  last  twenty  years  that  came  here  on  the 
invitation  of  Privilege  ;  but,  judging  from  the 
character  of  the  new  arrivals,  it  is  evident 
that  several  millions  would  not  have  reached 
these  shores  without  some  special  induce- 
ments, such  as  prepaid  passage,  free  lands  or 
assurances  of  employment  on  their  arrival. 

Privilege  has  glutted  the  labor  market 
of  America  with  the  dregs  of  European 
labor,  as  all  our  protected  labor  camps 
to-day  attest.  Privilege  has  seen  to  it  that 
there  is  protection  for  its  products.  It  has 
taken  care  also  that  there  should  be  absolute 
free  trade  in  labor.  With  every  levy  that 
Privilege  has  made  on  European  brawn, 
hosts  of  true  Americans,  despairing  of  the 
ever-increasing  hardship  of  competition  with 
labor  of  lower  and  lower  types,  have  been 
driven  from  the  protected  industries  into 
other  pursuits. 

True  American  labor  is  the  cheapest  labor 
on  earth  to-day.  It  is  the  most  intelligent, 
the  most  industrious,  the  most  aspiring. 
American  labor  is  high  priced  because  it  is 
productive.  It  has  been  sadly  debauched 
by  wretched  importations  in  the  interest  of 
6 


82       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

the  protected  employers,  but,  all  things  con- 
sidered, it  is  still  the  best  and  the  cheapest 
labor  in  the  world.  In  the  days  of  African 
slavery  it  was  supposed  that  the  southern 
states  had  cheap  labor,  but  the  survivors  of 
the  war  do  not  need  to  be  told  that  this  was 
a  mistake.  Slave  labor  was  expensive. 
Free  labor  is  cheaper,  though  nominally 
dearer,  because  it  is  more  productive. 

American  working  men  have  been  intim- 
idated for  many  years  by  dismal  warnings 
against  the  pauper  labor  of  Europe.  It  is 
not  the  pauper  labor  of  Europe,  but  the 
pauper  labor  drawn  from  Europe  and  now 
in  America  that  American  working  men  have 
to  fear.  In  times  of  depression  and  idle- 
ness, when  mills  and  factories  are  closing 
and  the  masters  of  industry  in  all  lines  are 
reducing  their  working  forces,  the  American 
out  of  employment  does  not  come  into  com- 
petition with  the  pauper  labor  of  Europe. 
That  labor  is  far  away. 

It  is  the  pauper  labor  of  America,  the 
labor  that  reaches  out  with  bony  fingers  for 
any  pittance,  that  can  live  and  does  live  as 
no  born  American  can  live,  which  confronts 


AMERICAN  PA  UPER  LABOR.  83 

him  in  the  labor  market.  He  must  meet  it 
on  equal  terms  or  starve.  It  is  here  to  stay. 
It  was  brought  here  unnaturally  by  Privilege, 
which  recognizes  no  obligation  to  keep  it 
employed,  and  which,  when  its  regular 
periods  of  starvation  ensue,  does  not  hesi- 
tate to  make  heavy  drafts  upon  the  charity 
of  a  people  whom,  in  good  times,  it  plunders. 

Besides  stimulating  this  inferior  immigra- 
tion and  drawing  many  Americans  away 
from  legitimate  pursuits  by  delusive  prom- 
ises of  gain.  Privilege  exercises  a  further 
injurious  influence  upon  labor.  As  a  result 
of  the  unjust  partiality  of  government,  man- 
ufacturing enterprises  have  been  over-stim- 
ulated, and,  in  some  cases,  have  been  estab- 
lished where  they  cannot  be  conducted 
profitably  even  with  an  ever-increasing  sub- 
sidy. The  promise  of  large  returns  on  cap- 
ital thus  invested  has  led  to  many  unwise 
enterprises  and  to  many  industrial  failures. 
In  every  case  of  this  description  labor  is  the 
chief  sufferer. 

The  excessive  development  of  manufac- 
turing has  compelled  also,  even  in  the  most 
prosperous  times,  a  system  of  agreements  as 


84       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

to  the  limitation  of  production,  which  has 
operated  to  the  injury  of  labor.  The  pro- 
tected industry  that  is  in  progress  continu- 
ously is  almost  unknown.  So  far  as  any 
possible  market  is  concerned,  American 
manufacturers  can  supply  it  by  working 
half  time.  These  long  periods  of  idleness 
follow  seasons  of  the  wildest  activity,  often 
seasons  when  the  largest  available  number 
of  hands  is  employed  over-hours  or  in  double 
shifts.  There  is  economy  in  the  operation 
of  a  great  plant  to  its  full  capacity.  From 
the  standpoint  of  capital  there  is  economy 
in  absolutely  closing  a  great  plant  as  soon 
as  the  product  has  accumulated  beyond  the 
ability  of  the  market  to  absorb  it. 

In  these  protracted  seasons  of  non  pro- 
duction, often  extending  over  months  of 
time,  the  labor  unnaturally  drawn  together 
must  and  does  separate,  and,  appearing  in 
other  places  in  search  of  employment,  easily 
accounts  for  our  armies  of  tramps  and  our 
pitiful  assemblages  of  the  unemployed. 

Such  are  some  of  the  more  important 
effects  of  Privilege  upon  labor.  So  far  as 
concerns    the    preposterous    delusion     that 


AMERICAN  PA  UPER  LABOR.  S5 

labor  as  a  whole  is  benefitted  by  the  system, 
the  men  who  are  employed  in  the  pro- 
tected industries  as  well  as  those  who  are  en- 
gaged in  the  victimized  industries,  have  only 
to  consider  the  fact  that  one  section  of  the 
people  cannot  be  taxed  to  enable  another 
section  to  pay  high  wages  or  any  wages  at 
all, —  even  if  the  wages  really  are  paid  — 
without  to  that  extent  impairing  the  ability 
of  the  oppressed  section  to  pay  high  wages. 

These  unjust  laws  create  no  wealth. 
Government  creates  no  wealth.  It  has  no 
money  of  its  own ;  it  can  give  nothing  to 
one  man  except  as  it  takes  from  another 
man.  The  protected  classes  can  have  no 
more  wages  than  the  ruling  rate  except  as 
they  deprive  other  men  of  the  ability  to  pay 
even  that  rate. 

In  spite  of  the  promises  made  in  its 
behalf,  there  can  be  no  profit  for  labor  as  a 
whole  in  such  a  system.  If  some  labor  is 
benefitted  by  it  occasionally  in  localities,  its 
advantages  are  gained  at  the  expense  of 
other  labor,  and  at  a  sacrifice  of  self  respect 
of  which  no  man  worthy  of  American  citi- 
zenship would  be  guilty. 


XVII. 

PRIVILEGE'S  BROKEN   PROMISES. 

UNDER  the  protective  tariff  certain 
industries  have  been  made  the  recip- 
ients of  governmental  bounty.  They  have 
been  selected  through  no  virtue  of  their  own  ; 
their  proprietors  are  no  better  than  other 
men ;  their  products  are  no  more  necessary 
to  the  welfare  of  Americans  than  are  the 
products  of  other  industries.  They  and 
their  employes  do  not  constitute  one  tenth 
of  the  people  of  the  United  States  who  are 
engaged  in  gainful  occupations. 

It  is  imperatively  necessary  to  the  suc- 
cess of  such  a  system  of  rapine  that  the 
beneficiaries  shall  be  less  numerous  than  the 
victims.  One  in  ten  is  a  liberal  estimate  of 
the  proportion  of  possible  tariff  proteges  to 
undoubted  tariff  victims. 

If  the  utter  destruction  of  Privilege  were 
to  bring  instantly  to  an  end  all  these  pam- 
pered industries,  and  if  no  new  enterprises 
were  to  take  their  places, —  which  will  hardly 
86 


PRIVILEGE'S  BROKEN  PROMISES.      87 

be  claimed  by  anybody  —  the  worst  that 
could  befall  the  people  would  be  the  com- 
petition to  which  this  unemployed  element 
would  immediately  subject  other  labor.  If 
these  industries  cannot  exist  without  the 
tariff,  the  labor  displaced  by  the  abolition  of 
the  tariff  would  have  to  find  occupation  in 
other  pursuits. 

But  is  it  conceivable  that  the  removal  of 
monopoly  taxes  would  end  every  American 
industry  which  has  profited  by  them  ?  We 
know  better.  There  would  be  some  losses : 
there  would  be  many  and  mighty  gains. 

Industries  unfavorably  situated  with  ref- 
erence to  raw  materials,  fuel  and  markets 
would  die  out,  as  they  always  have  done, 
and  be  succeeded  in  more  favorable  locali- 
ties by  more  deserving  enterprises.  The 
premiums  so  long  put  upon  sloth,  ignorance 
and  extravagance  would  be  withdrawn  ;  and 
with  a  free  field  and  a  fair  chance,  human 
sagacity  and  energy  would  be  compelled  no 
longer  to  stand  abashed  in  the  presence  of 
greed  and  power.  Industry  would  be 
natural ;  not  forced  and  unnatural.  It  would 
leave  some  of  the  haunts  made  odious  by  the 


88       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

predominating  influence  of  monopoly,  but  it 
would  reappear  in  greater  vigor,  in  fresher 
and  fairer  scenes  that  were  prepared  for  it 
from  the  beginning. 

For  every  weak,  unhealthy  or  dishonest 
industry  that  passed  away,  because  it  had 
depended  like  a  mendicant  on  politics  for 
sustenance,  a  dozen  honest  and  vigorous  in- 
dustries would  spring  into  existence. 

Admitting  all  that  can  be  claimed  for 
protectionism,  it  is  of  value  only  to  a  small 
minority  of  the  people.  How  far  short  it 
falls  of  what  is  claimed  for  it,  how  unmind- 
ful it  is  of  its  promises  to  labor,  is  shown  by 
an  examination  and  a  comparison  of  the 
condition  of  working  men  in  what  are  called 
hard  times  in  protected  and  in  unprotected 
industries.  Suspend  work  in  one  of  these 
protected  labor  camps  to-day,  and  starvation 
begins  to-morrow.  Nowhere  else  in  America 
is  the  margin  so  narrow. 

Protectionism  demands  much  from  the 
American  people  and  gives  little  or  nothing 
in  return,  exactly  as  it  pleases.  It  demands 
as  a  right  the  privilege  of  taxing  all  for  the 
benefit  of  a  few.      It  makes  certain  promises 


PRIVILEGE'S  BROKEN  PROMISES.      89 

of  generosity  toward  labor,  but  they  are  for- 
gotten as  soon  as  its  own  point  is  gained. 
Putting  the  best  possible  face  upon  its  posi- 
tion, it  has  been  seen  that  protectionism,  in 
spite  of  the  advantages  conferred  upon  it,  is 
at  liberty  to  ignore  every  engagement  and 
that  there  is  no  way  by  which  it  can  be 
compelled  to  live  up  to  its  part  of  the  con- 
tract. 


XVIII. 
LIKE   THE  THIEF   IN   THE  NIGHT. 

PROTECTIONISM  is  the  only  Ameri- 
can employer  having  a  legal  and  pub- 
lic as  well  as  a  moral  and  private  obligation 
to  deal  generously  with  labor.  It  asks  and 
receives  public  assistance  on  that  very 
ground ;  it  agrees  to  share  its  plunder  with 
labor;  it  proclaims  its  disinterestedness  and 
its  philanthropy.  Yet  the  publicly  expressed 
"regret"  of  a  recent  president  of  the  United 
States  committed  to  this  detestable  policy, 
is  a  notice  to  every  American  that,  in  spite 
of  the  millions  contributed  to  monopoly 
under  protection  laws,  the  payment  of  living 
wages  depends  wholly  upon  the  will  of  the 
employer.  Like  the  slave  owner,  he  is  mas- 
ter. He  recognizes  no  contract,  written  or 
implied;  he  begs  or  bullies  legislative 
favors  for  himself ;  his  employes  receive 
from  him  in  wages  what  they  can  extort  by 
strikes  and  riots,  and  no  more. 

The  employer,  whether  protected  or  not, 

go 


LIKE  THE  THIEF  IN  THE  NIGHT       9^ 

pays  such  wages  as  he  pleases  or  as  he  must. 
If  he  can  find  men  who  will  work  cheaper 
than  those  in  his  service  at  the  time,  he  may 
and  usually  he  will  dismiss  the  old  and 
employ  the  new  ;  and  the  law  will  sustain 
him  in  his  purpose  and  in  the  execution  of 
it,  no  matter  to  what  extremity  he  may  go. 
That  is  law  which  is  necessary  to  the  preser- 
vation of  society ;  it  is  law  which  nobody 
except  the  beneficiaries  of  Privilege  attempts 
to  deny  or  to  set  aside ;  it  is  the  law  to 
which  protectionists  themselves  appeal 
when  —  all  their  falsehoods  exposed  and 
all  their  promises  broken  —  they  run  to 
cover  to  escape  the  fury  of  their  unhappy 
dupes. 

The  bad  faith  with  which  Privilege  treats 
labor  is  shown  in  many  other  ways.  It  is 
the  protected  employer  and  not  the  unpro- 
tected employer  against  whom  run  all  the 
modern  factory  laws  for  the  enforcement 
of  decency  and  humanity.  It  is  only  in  the 
protected  industries  that  the  state  must  ap- 
pear with  a  strong  arm  to  prevent  shocking 
outrages  upon  womanhood  and  childhood. 
It    is   in   the   protected  industries   that    the 


92       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

"truck  store"  flourishes.  Industries  which, 
if  let  alone,  would  brutalize  women  and 
drag  little  children  into  early  graves,  are 
the  ones,  almost  without  exception,  which 
pose  before  the  American  people  as  humane 
and  disinterested  supporters  of  the  protect- 
ive tariff. 

We  may  judge  from  these  evidences  of 
the  heartlessness  of  protected  capital,  how 
insincere  and  how  dangerous  is  the  claim 
that  Privilege  looks  first  to  the  welfare  of 
labor.  Nothing  but  state  laws,  passed  by 
men  whose  hearts  and  consciences  have  been 
touched  by  the  misery  resulting  from  the 
avarice  of  protected  manufacturers  and  pro- 
ducers, prevents  these  pharisees  and  hypo- 
crites to-day  from  sending  women  under 
ground  in  their  protected  mines,  from  hud- 
dling girls  and  men  indiscriminately  in  small 
rooms  in  their  protected  factories,  and  from 
confining  little  children  for  long  hours  amid 
the  thundering  machinery  of  their  protected 
mills. 

With  evidences  of  such  greed  written  all 
over  the  land,  how  is  it  that  men  can  be  per- 
suaded that  a  system  so   shrewdly  designed 


LIKE  THE  THIEF  IN  THE  NIGHT.       93 

in  the  interest  of  a  few  can  be  made  of  ser- 
vice to  all? 

This  vein  of  dissimulation  runs  through 
every  protectionist  argument  or  assertion. 
In  the  beginning  no  man  denied  that  tariffs 
increased  the  price,  not  only  of  the  imported 
goods  on  which  they  were  laid,  but  of  do- 
mestic products  that  came  into  competition 
with  them.  Now  it  is  held  that  they 
cheapen  all  prices.  When  complaint  was 
made  that  prices  had  not  been  lowered,  it 
was  said  that  prices  were  high  because  wages 
were  high.  When  it  was  shown  that  wages 
in  protected  industries  were  no  higher  and 
in  many  of  them  were  lower  than  in  unpro- 
tected industries,  it  was  denied  that  the  tariff 
was  a  tax  at  all.  When  the  farmer  com- 
plained that  the  manufacturer  was  taking 
advantage  of  him,  a  pretense  of  putting  a 
protective  tariff  on  farm  products  was  made, 
and  the  doctrine  was  then  daringly  pro- 
claimed that  tariffs  cheapen  the  prices  of 
manufactured  goods,  but  increase  the  prices 
of  everything  that  the  agriculturists  have  to 
sell. 

These  are  not    clever    falsehoods ;    they 


94       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

are  outrageously  clumsy.  They  are  first 
uttered  with  a  suspicion  that  they  will  be 
drowned  in  a  chorus  of  jeers,  and  are  re- 
peated only  when  it  becomes  evident  that 
the  capacity  of  men  to  accept  them  has  been 
underestimated.  The  hopes  of  their  authors 
hang  all  the  time  on  the  success  of  this  or 
that  desperate  expedient.  Like  the  cheaper 
offenders  known  to  the  police  magistrates  of 
our  cities,  they  always  are  on  the  defensive, 
and  base  their  hopes  of  escape  on  the  inspi- 
ration that  the  hour  or  the  occasion  may 
give  to  nimble  wits. 

No  beneficiary  of  Privilege  expects  that 
his  system  will  live.  It  has  lasted  much 
longer  than  he  ever  imagined  it  could  last ; 
but,  like  the  thief  in  the  night,  he  takes  his 
life  in  his  hand  and  goes  forth,  expecting  and 
prepared  for  the  worst,  and  yet  hoping  by 
wit  or  by  trick  to  gain  one  more  day,  or 
month,  or  year  of  plunder. 


XIX. 

BY   ITS   FRUITS. 

PRIVILEGE  is  destroying  the  self-reli- 
ance of  the  American  people  as  surely 
as  it  is  corrupting  our  youth,  exasperating 
our  labor,  and  polluting  our  politics.  We 
not  only  receive  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
immigrants  each  year,  but  we  maintain  an 
institution  which  teaches  these  newcomers 
immediately  on  their  arrival,  that  they  are  to 
receive  work  and  wages  because  the  govern- 
ment taxes  other  workingmen,  most  of  them 
born  here,  for  their  support.  The  helpless 
children  of  oppression  at  home,  they  gladly 
accept  this  condition  of  pauperism  here ;  and 
if  the  man  who  stands  between  them  and  the 
government  fulfilled  his  part  of  the  agree- 
ment, there  would  be  no  complaint  from  the 
people  thus  pauperized.  It  is  not  until  they 
discover  that  he  does  not  bestow  upon  them 
in  alms  the  plunder  that  he  takes  from 
American  citizens  that  they  revolt. 

In  the  self-respecting  days   of  American 
95 


9^      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  Limited. 

labor,  how  many  workingmen  could  have 
been  obtained  for  service  in  a  shop  or  mill 
whose  owner  announced  his  incapacity  to  pay 
the  ruling  rate  of  wages  unless  he  were  given 
the  privilege  of  taxing  the  people  at  large 
for  the  purpose?  What  proud-spirited  Amer- 
ican mechanic  would  have  taken  the  money 
that  any  mendicant  of  this  description  might 
have  offered  him? 

Let  the  answer  be  read  in  the  protected 
labor  camps  of  this  country  to-day,  where 
"American  workingmen  "  are  known,  not  by 
name,  but  by  number,  and  where  a  man  with 
a  pronounceable  name  or  an  English  tongue 
is  so  rare  an  object  as  to  occasion  remark. 

In  the  offscourings  of  the  old  world  the 
lords  of  Privilege  in  America  found  exactly 
the  material  that  they  wanted,  out  of  which 
to  constitute  a  pauper  labor  class,  and  which 
they  could  fashion  into  voters  who  would 
assist  them  in  fastening  their  detestable  sys- 
tem upon  better  men.  Accustomed  to  caste 
and  Privilege  and  snobbery  and  injustice  at 
home,  and  unacquainted  with  the  independ- 
ence that  once  characterized  American  work- 
ingmen, these  wretches   fell  easily  into  the 


BY  ITS  FRUITS.  97 

trap  that  was  set  for  them,  and  voting  pro- 
tection ballots  that  they  could  not  read, 
they  became  instruments  in  the  hands  of 
their  employers  to  extend  the  accursed  op- 
pression of  mediaeval  Europe  over  a  people 
who  had  once  been  virtuous  enough  to  throw 
it  off. 

American  labor  has  been  driven  in  despair 
from  the  shops  and  mines  to  the  farms  and 
to  other  unprotected  industries ;  there  it  is 
defiantly  taxed  ostensibly  to  enable  Privi- 
lege to  pay  high  wages,  but  really  to  ag- 
grandize its  wealth  and  enable  it  to  astonish 
both  hemispheres  with  the  prodigality  of  its 
expenditure.  That  is  where  true  American 
labor  is,  and  that  is  what  it  is  doing. 

The  more  highly  protected  an  industry 
may  be,  the  fewer  Americans  will  be  found 
in  it.  The  employer  who  professes  the  most 
unselfish  interest  in  the  welfare  of  American 
labor  will  be  found  to  have  the  closest  rela- 
tions with  the  swarming  thousands  at  quar- 
antine. The  interest  that  pretends  to  enter- 
tain the  gravest  fears  of  a  "  flood  of  pauper- 
made  goods  "  is  most  likely  to  preside  over 
a  starvation  camp,  where  no  English  is 
7 


9^       GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

spoken,  where  human  beings  live  like  sav- 
ages, and  where  no  American  idea  save  that 
of  taxing  one  man  for  the  benefit  of  another 
man  ever  takes  root. 

This  redundant  "  protected"  labor,  which 
is  taught  to  depend  upon  government  for 
its  support,  is  the  true  pauper  labor  of  the 
world,  and  it  is  positively  the  only  pauper 
labor  to  be  found  anywhere  on  earth  outside 
of  the  almshouse. 

Privilege  rarely  concerns  itself  with  the 
hardships  of  the  people  whom  it  has  assem- 
bled in  the  neighborhoods  of  its  mills  and 
factories.  The  long  periods  of  idleness, 
caused  by  overproduction  and  the  glutting 
of  insufficient  markets,  are  seasons  of  destitu- 
tion to  the  labor  thus  abandoned  and  of 
holidays  and  foreign  travel  to  the  benefi- 
ciaries of  the  system. 

Labor  has  starved  in  this  country  every 
winter  for  a  generation,  under  laws  ostensibly 
enacted  in  its  behalf ;  but  it  was  not  until 
these  measures  were  assailed  by  a  congress 
elected  to  repeal  them  that  Privilege  discov- 
ered that  want  and  famine  existed.  In  the 
face   of  a  possible  loss    of    its   advantages, 


BY  ITS  FRUITS.  99 

Privilege  made  the  most  of  the  distress  occa- 
sioned by  its  own  excesses  ;  and  by  enlisting 
the  support  of  society,  it  brought  forth  a 
charitable  movement  so  broad  and  so  gener- 
ous that  men  and  women  long  accustomed 
to  work  in  that  field  were  amazed  at  what 
appeared  to  be  the  spontaneous  liberality  of 
the  people. 

Politics  had  accomplished  in  a  month 
what  years  of  exhortation  in  behalf  of  reli- 
gion and  humanity  had  failed  to  bring  about. 
The  hungry  were  fed,  the  naked  were 
clothed,  the  sick  were  visited ;  not  because 
the  hungry  and  naked  and  sick  had  not  been 
with  us  always,  but  because  Privilege,  dom- 
inating society,  had  decided  that  the  "  object 
lesson"  of  the  disaster  surely  to  be  experi- 
enced if  its  system  were  attacked,  must  be 
made  as  impressive  as  possible. 

Embittering  every  morsel  of  food  re- 
ceived by  the  really  necessitous  at  that  time 
was  the  not  always  spoken  but  the  well- 
understood  threat  of  the  ruling  class:  "You 
shall  have  bread  now,  but  the  next  time  you 
vote  against  us  you  shall  starve!  " 

Privilege   teaches   the  most  ignorant,  the 


loo      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO,,  LIMITED. 

most  immoral  and  the  most  completely  for- 
eignized  section  of  the  American  people — 
the  ones  most  sorely  in  need  of  instruction  in 
the  fundamentals  of  our  civilization — that 
industry  and  thrift  are  not  of  prime  import- 
ance, but  that  government  assistance  is  ab- 
solutely necessary  to  their  welfare.  Having 
unsettled  labor  with  these  shameful  precepts 
and  delusive  promises,  Privilege  withholds 
the  expected  plunder  and  shows  in  its  own 
ostentation  what  unjust  laws  do  for  man. 
Goaded  to  exasperation,  the  workingman 
sometimes  strikes  and  riots,  and  perhaps  in 
defeat  he  is  starved  and  driven  from  home  a 
vagabond ;  but  he  goes  forth — a  dupe  no 
more — sullenly  to  join  the  great  army  which, 
officered  by  exiles  from  despotic  Europe, 
nurses  here  the  hatred  of  wealth  and  author- 
ity that  was  engendered  there. 

This  is  a  matter  which  Americans  will 
have  to  consider  some  time.  Why  not  now? 
It  is  a  question  which  may  yet  be  settled,  and 
settled  right.  Delay  is  dangerous.  A  repub- 
lic in  which  all  men  are  supposed  to  be  equal 
cannot  with  safety  to  itself  habituate  millions 
in  this  way  to  scmi-dependance.    A  republic 


BY  ITS  FRUITS.  loi 

cannot  afford  to  accustom  a  great  class  to 
the  idea  that  it  is  righ4.  ^c  prey  upon  another 
class.  A  republic  cannot  with  impuriity  per- 
mit one  class  of  men  tc:  deludte  ?nd  exisp- 
erate  another  class  of  men.  A  republic  is 
for  all,  or  it  is  a  mockery. 

A  republic  which  develops  in  the  minds 
of  a  considerable  number  of  its  citizens  the 
idea  that  government  is  a  thing  to  be  plun- 
dered, or  a  plunderer  itself  ever  ready  to 
bestow  upon  them  money  or  property  taken 
unjustly  from  other  men,  is  producing  at 
both  extremities  of  the  social  scale  the  very 
elements  which  have  destroyed  more  than 
one  civilization,  and  which  on  several  occa- 
sions have  menaced  our  own. 


XX, 

A   GIANT    IN   CHAINS. 

THIRTY  years  of  protective  tariff  taxation 
have  reduced  American  agriculture  to 
a  position  so  ignoble  that  in  some  places  it 
does  not  even  retain  its  self-respect.  A  gen- 
eration ago  the  American  farmer  was  the 
proudest  and  most  independent  workingman 
on  earth.  To-day  he  cannot  persuade  his 
own  son  to  remain  on  the  farm.  Thirty  years 
of  unjust  laws  have  made  the  farmer  the 
sport  of  the  cities,  the  butt  of  all  the  cheap 
wits  and  the  hoped-for  victim  of  every  swind- 
ler in  the  land. 

In  the  thirty  years  of  protectionism,  the 
typical  American  farmer  with  whom  we  have 
been  and  are  familiar  has  been  changed  from 
a  well-dressed,  well-read,  independent  and 
spirited  man  to  a  scare-crow,  with  vacant 
eyes  and  gaping  mouth,  with  the  inevitable 
confidence  man  near  at  hand.  We  do  not 
deceive  and  oppress  a  man  and  retain  our 
respect  for  him.     The  contempt  with  which 

I02 


A  GIANT  IN  CHAINS.  103 

the  privileged  classes  in  America  regard 
the  farmer  whom  they  plunder  has  been 
communicated  to  the  whole  body  of  the 
people. 

It  was  the  prosperity  and  independence 
of  the  American  farmer  that  first  excited  the 
cupidity  of  the  protectionists.  They  coveted 
his  possessions,  and  they  proposed  class  leg- 
islation as  a  subterfuge,  under  cover  of 
which  they  were  to  plunder  him.  They  told 
him  that  he  needed  a  home  market  and  that 
they  would  give  it  to  him  in  return  for  the 
privilege  of  taxing  him. 

When  the  home  market  swindle  was  ex- 
posed they  beguiled  him  with  the  idea  that 
they  could  and  would  share  their  protective 
tariff  with  him  ;  and,  while  going  through  the 
mockery  of  putting  a  tax  on  foreign  agri- 
cultural products,  they  took  occasion  to  in- 
crease their  own  share  of  the  spoils. 

The  protective  tariff  rests  upon  nearly 
everything  that  the  farmer  uses  or  wears.  It 
enhances  the  price  of  nearly  everything  that 
he  buys.  It  does  not  add  a  farthing  to  the 
value  of  anything  that  he  has  to  sell.  On 
the  other  hand,  its  burdens  fall  so  heavily 


104      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

upon  almost  all  other  Americans  that  their 
capacity  to  buy  of  his  product  is  diminished, 
and  on  frequent  occasions  is  entirely  de- 
stroyed. 

The  hope  held  out  to  him  that  the  mock 
tariff  on  agricultural  products  which  we  do 
not  import  can  in  any  manner  benefit  him,  is 
shown  by  steadily  declining  prices  to  be  de- 
lusive. It  was  a  bribe  which  could  not  be 
paid.  If  it  could  have  been  paid  it  would 
have  bankrupted  and  impoverished  the  re- 
mainder of  the  people. 

Everybody  cannot  be  the  gainer  by  class 
taxation  ;  somebody  must  suffer.  Speaking 
in  general  terms,  the  farmer  is  more  particu- 
larly the  victim  than  any  other  man  in  the 
United  States;  on  his  bent  back  the  great 
monopoly  burden  rests.  American  agricul- 
ture comes  into  competition  with  the  cheap- 
est peasant  labor  on  earth;  yet  but  for  the 
inflictions  put  upon  it  by  the  craft  of  a  class, 
it  would  be  amply  able  to  take  care  of  itself. 
Its  splendid  surpluses  are  disposed  of  in  the 
remotest  lands,  and  the  returns  serve  to 
quicken  every  pulsation  of  trade  and  com- 
merce throughout  the  country. 


A  GIANT  IN  CHAINS.  105 

American  agriculture  is  a  giant  in  chains. 
It  is  capable  of  showering  blessings  upon  the 
people  with  such  lavish  prodigality,  that 
every  other  interest  and  industry  must  re- 
joice in  its  strength  and  share  in  its  abund- 
ance. Exposed  as  it  is  to  the  shackles  of  a 
mercenary  class  at  home  ;  hedged  about  as  it 
is  by  laws  designed  to  cripple  and  oppress  it 
abroad  ;  and  humiliated  as  it  is  by  systems 
and  policies  cunningly  devised  to  bring 
reproach  and  ridicule  upon  it  everywhere,  it 
nevertheless  sustains  by  its  toil  and  privation 
the  great  weight  of  injustice  that  rests  upon 
the  country. 

It  shares  none  of  the  luxury  of  a  land 
which  it  has  enriched.  It  is  poorly  clothed, 
poorly  housed,  and  poorly  fed.  The  small 
economies  which  it  submissively  practices 
will  not  in  a  year  compensate  for  the  wicked 
impositions  which  it  suffers  in  a  month  at  the 
hands  of  Privilege.  Embraced  within  its 
ranks  are  a  majority  of  the  people.  Its  pa- 
tience under  injustice,  its  hopefulness  under 
adversity,  its  courage  in  the  presence  of  dis- 
aster, its  meekness  under  tyranny,  and  its 
humility  under  the  scorn  of  a  class  whom  it 


io6      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

has  made  powerful,  and  whom  it  can,  if  it 
will,  sweep  away  with  a  breath,  are  among 
the  most  amazing  exhibitions  that  the  world 
ever  has  seen. 


XXI. 

AMERICANS   WITH    A    GRIEVANCE. 

PRIVILEGE  appears  to  cherish  many 
illusions,  but  it  may  be  assured  of  one 
momentous  fact — a  majority  of  the  Ameri- 
can people  are  fully  awake  to  the  enormity 
of  the  injustice  that  lurks  in  the  laws  of  this 
country.  They  do  not  as  yet  agree  as  to  the 
remedy  to  be  applied,  but  they  are  agreed 
as  to  the  evil  complained  of. 
'  The  feverish  unrest  of  the  masses,  the 
angry  outbreaks  of  turbulent  and  desperate 
men,  the  sullen  mutterings  of  discontent,  all 
indicate  a  keen  popular  appreciation  of  the 
situation,  if  they  do  not  presage  violence  and 
revolution. 

Sweeping  and  even  cyclonic  victories  for 
one  political  party  or  another  at  short  inter- 
vals, signify  not  so  much  the  fickleness  of 
public  opinion,  as  the  lack  of  popular  confi- 
dence in  the  leadership  of  all  parties.  These 
whirlwind  votes,  first  in  one  direction  and 
soon  with  even  greater  fury  in  another  direc- 
107 


I o8      GO  VERNMENT  A ND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

tion,  do  not  measure  the  calm  and  settled 
judgment  of  the  people,  nor  do  they  hold  out 
a  promise  of  a  speedy  improvement  in  exist- 
ing conditions.  They  are  indicative,  rather, 
of  popular  demoralization,  if  not  of  despera- 
tion and  despair. 

The  importance  of  awakening  patriotic 
Americans  to  a  serious  realization  of  the  fact 
that  destructive  forces  are  at  work  among 
them,  ought  not  to  be  underestimated.  The 
plundered  farmer  of  the  western  plains,  the 
misguided  workingman  of  the  cities,  the 
duped  immigrant  languishing  in  the  pro- 
tected camps,  the  battalions  of  tramps  on 
our  highways,  the  homeless  and  destitute  of 
every  kindred  and  clime,  to  whom  false 
hopes  have  been  held  out  and  whose  concep- 
tions of  the  duty  of  government  have  been 
perverted,  must   be  saved  from  themselves. 

They  have  been  taught  and  are  now  taught 
falsely ;  and  in  their  efforts  to  escape  from 
the  misfortunes  that  overwhelm  them,  it  is 
not  surprising  that  they  have  become  the 
victims  of  the  most  visionary  fanatics  of  the 
day, —  rushing  madly  one  year  to  the  sup- 
port of  the   wildest  dreamers,  and   the  next 


AMERICANS  WITH  A  GRIEVANCE.     109 

year,  in  sheer  abandonment  precipitating 
themselves  under  the  wheels  of  the  monop- 
olistic Juggernaut. 

The  violence  of  far  western  legislation  on 
the  subjects  of  finance,  capital  and  taxation, 
is  the  expression  in  one  locality  of  the  utter 
despair  of  the  agricultual  population, —  as 
the  equally  menacing  growth  of  violence  in 
strikes,  in  speech,  and  in  the  socialistic  prop- 
aganda in  the  cities,  is  the  manifestation  of 
the  hopelessness  of  large  masses  of  the  work- 
ing population  in  other  localities. 

In  the  face  of  such  indubitable  proofs  of 
popular  discontent  as  these,  it  is  idle  and 
worse,  for  the  agents  of  Privilege  to  recite 
their  well-learned  harangues  about  universal 
prosperity.  The  prosperity  of  which  they 
boast  has  been  confined  to  a  class.  The 
victims  of  that  prosperity,  the  men  whose 
toil  has  set  forth  the  feast,  deny  before 
heaven  that  they  have  shared  in  it,  and  their 
word  is  entitled  to  consideration. 

These  farmers,  miners  and  workingmen 
are  not  inexcusably  vicious.  They  are  not 
anarchists.  In  the  main  they  are  native 
Americans.     They  have   been  ridiculed  and 


no      GO  VERNMENT  A ND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

misrepresented  until  it  is  the  fashion  to  dis- 
miss them  with  a  smile  or  a  sneer  ;  but  no 
man, —  certainly  no  beneficiary  of  Privilege, 
—  who  can  read,  should  forget  that  they 
come  of  a  race  that  pulls  down  tyrants  and 
destroys  tyranny.  They  are  of  the  blood 
that  has  been  tested  in  the  battles  of  liberty 
in  the  Old  World  as  well  as  in  the  New. 
They  are  not  aliens ;  they  are  not  cranks ; 
they  are  Americans  with  a  grievance,  and 
they  will  be  heard. 

These  elements  have  been  irritated  by 
distress,  by  deception  and  by  false  doctrine. 
They  have  been  misled  by  Privilege  and 
they  may  be  misled  again ;  they  have  fallen 
i/ito  social,  financial  and  economic  errors, 
partly  of  their  own  contrivance,  and  they 
may  be  beguiled  in  the  same  way  for 
another  season ;  but  the  time  is  approaching 
when  the  promises  of  Privilege  will  not  avail. 

They  know  that  somebody  profits  by  the 
system  which  they  have  supported  and,  in 
a  fashion,  attempted  to  imitate.  They 
will  not  much  longer  be  deceived  by  assur- 
ances that  they  are  to  share  in  the  proceeds. 
When  that  time   comes, —  when  neither  the 


AMERICANS  WITH  A  GRIEVANCE,     m 

voice  of  reason  and  justice  nor  the  honeyed 
words  of  the  discredited  agent  of  Privilege 
shall  be  heard  above  the  tumult  of  angry 
cries  for  vengeance  and  reprisal, —  the  true 
American  may  well  tremble  for  his  country. 

Whether  they  appreciate  it  or  not,  the 
men  who  profit  financially  and  politically  by 
this  detestable  system  are  playing  with  fire. 
They  are  goading  to  fury  a  people  whom 
they  have  instructed  in  the  methods  of  injus- 
tice. They  have  prepared  a  powder  maga- 
zine, at  the  doors  of  which  faggots  are 
already  in  full  glow.  If  they  cannot  or  will 
not  of  their  own  volition  abandon  their  peril- 
ous adventures,  the  honest  men  of  the  coun- 
try, regardless  of  past  party  affiliations,  must 
speak  and  act  in  behalf  of  their  menaced 
institutions.  Present  social  conditions  can- 
not last ;  they  must  be  made  better  or 
they  will  become  worse. 

The  unwisdom  of  temporizing  with  such 
an  evil  as  this  may  be  seen  in  every  chapter 
of  the  history  of  progress  and  freedom.. 
Nearly  all  the  great  battles  for  liberty 
have  been  fought  on  questions  of  taxation. 
The  English  revolution  grew  out  of  a  ques- 


113      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

tion  of  taxation  involving  an  important  prin- 
ciple but  a  small  amount  of  money.  The 
American  revolution  was  precipitated  by  a 
question  of  taxation.  The  French  revolu- 
tion grew  out  of  long  continued  abuse  of  the 
taxing  power  by  kings  and  nobles. 

In  all  lands  and  in  all  times,  wherever 
and  whenever  a  substantial  gain  has  been 
made  on  the  side  of  human  rights  and  con- 
stitutional liberty,  it  has  been,  as  a  rule,  the 
direct  result  of  popular  uprisings  against 
unjust  taxation. 

The  fiery  spirit  that  sustained  Simon  de 
Montfort's  first  house  of  burgesses  in  Eng- 
land ;  that  inspired  the  followers  of  John 
Hampden  in  their  rebellion  against  the  ship 
tax ;  that  actuated  the  Continental  Congress 
in  America  and  the  States  General  in 
France,  was  awakened  by  the  oppression  of 
class  by  class  under  the  forms  of  taxation. 

That  is  the  spirit  with  which  Privilege  is 
trifling  in  the  United  States  to-day.  It  is 
true  that  it  maintains,  with  diminishing  evi- 
dences of  sincerity,  that  it  seeks  the  good  of 
all ;  but  it  will  not  be  possible  much  longer 
to  deceive  many  people  on  that  point. 


AMERICANS  WITH  A  GRIEVANCE.     113 

Did  Dubarry  and  Pompadour  take  into 
account  the  starving  peasants  of  the  Rhone, 
the  Loire  or  the  Garonne  ?  Does  the  tariff- 
enriched  lumber  baron  give  a  thought  to  the 
pinched  farmers  on  the  treeless  plains  of 
Nebraska,  Kansas  or  Dakota  ?  Did  Louis's 
brilliant  court  know  of  the  wretches  who 
haunted  the  garrets  of  Paris  and  Lyons  ? 
How  many  dividends  have  the  protected 
industries  of  America  paid  out  of  the  "  cut 
wages  "  of  their  working  men  ? 

Successful  tyranny  in  France  bred  a  gen- 
eration of  voluptuaries  and  aristocrats  who 
forgot,  if  they  ever  knew,  that  it  was  neces- 
sary to  apologize  for  oppression.  The 
United  States  have  not  quite  reached  that 
level  as  yet,  but  they  are  approaching  it.  A 
few  more  triumphs,  and  Privilege  will  become 
an  institution  whose  supporters  will  accept 
their  "hereditary  rights"  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and,  instead  of  wasting  time  in 
an  effort  to  convince  the  people  that  the 
system  is  of  value  to  them,  will  set  about 
the  pleasant  task  of  hanging  men  who  dare 
assail  such  "vested  rights."  That  is  the 
solemn  prospect  ahead  of  us. 


XXII. 

OUR  DEPENDENT  CLASSES. 

THE  dependent  classes  in  this  country 
are  becoming  too  numerous  and  too 
clamorous.  They  not  only  crowd  each 
other,  but  they  press  too  closely  upon  peo- 
ple who  are  struggling  to  maintain  their 
own  independence.  They  take  up  too  much 
room ;  they  fill  too  large  a  space  in  the 
public  eye ;  their  intolerable  quarrels  over 
the  division  of  their  plunder  demand  too 
much  attention.  They  cost  too  much.  It 
is  becoming  more  and  more  difficult  to  sup- 
port the  burden.  It  cannot  be  borne  much 
longer. 

Too  many  people  in  the  United  States 
demand  a  livelihood  from  the  proceeds  of 
inflated  stocks  and  bonds,  from  vast  or  petty 
impositions  on  the  masses,  from  conspiracies 
in  production  or  in  distribution,  or  from  the 
tribute  that  unjust  laws  enable  them  to  wring 
from  industry. 

Too  many  people  in  the  United  States 
114 


O  UR  DEPENDENT  CLA  SSES.  i  ■  5 

live  by  their  wits ;  too  many  people  in  the 
United  States  are  seeking  to  live  by  their 
wits  ;  too  many  people  in  the  United  States 
with  a  capital  of  a  few  thousand  dollars,  or 
with  no  capital  at  all,  are  attempting  to  live 
without  work. 

This  unworthy  ambition  affects  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  men ;  it  blunts  their  sen- 
sibilities ;  it  leads  them  into  shameful  com- 
plications and  not  infrequently  into  crime. 
It  causes  men  holding  high  public  stations  to 
pass  upon  matters  involving  their  own  finan- 
cial interests.  It  taints  many  acts  of  legis- 
lation and  some  of  the  judgments  of  our 
courts.  It  enables  United  States  senators 
to  vote  tariffs  and  subsidies  into  their  own 
pockets,  and  to  face  with  calm  indifference 
such  angry  popular  protests  as  may  reach 
their  ears.  It  has  degraded  our  state  and 
municipal  legislatures,  until  men  of  first  class 
character  and  ability  are,  as  a  rule,  no  longer 
to  be  found  in  them.  It  has  made  the  man- 
agement of  many  of  our  corporations  the 
subject  of  world-wide  scandals.  It  has 
encouraged  pauperism  among  the  poor  and 
stimulated  sharp  practice  among  the  vicious. 


ii6      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

As  the  well  dressed  rogues  and  depend- 
ants have  multiplied,  there  has  been  natur- 
ally and  unavoidably  a  corresponding 
increase  in  the  ranks  of  the  ragged  rogues 
and  dependants.  The  example  of  the  rich 
has  not  been  lost  upon  the  poor. 

For  every  great  scheme  of  Privilege  on 
the  part  of  the  well-to-do,  there  have  been 
scores  of  small  projects  in  mendicancy  on 
the  part  of  the  less  favored.  A  society 
which  applauds  undeserved  subsidies  and 
bounties  will  not  severely  judge  the  recipi- 
ents of  dishonest  pensions  or  the  holders  of 
cheap  political  sinecures. 

Where  so  many  are  looking  to  govern- 
ment for  assistance  or  advantage,  we  need 
not  be  surprised  to  find  a  marked  increase  in 
common  pauperism.  The  idea  is  contagious. 
Workingmen  who  are  taught  that  in  times  of 
prosperity  their  wages  are  conferred  by  a 
system  which  taxes  other  men  for  their  ben- 
efit, do  not  hesitate  when  the  inevitable  day 
of  adversity  arrives  to  demand  and  accept 
alms  of  the  people.  Their  condition  is 
one  of  perpetual  dependence.  When  the 
processes   of  Privilege   fail    them,   they    are 


OUR  DEPENDENT  CLASSES.         117 

conscious  of  no  humiliation  by  discarding 
the  agency  of  the  protected  wage  payer, 
and  accepting  directly  from  the  community 
in  personal  contributions  the  bounty  which 
even  a  false  system  cannot  always  provide. 

The  self-reliance  of  our  people  was  once 
the  boast  of  the  republic.  They  would  en- 
dure privation  and  hunger,  but  they  would 
not  beg.  Among  the  poor  there  was  a  sense 
of  equality  with  the  richest,  a  true  pride 
which  ill  fortune  and  hardship  could  not 
subdue,  and  a  hope  for  better  things  to  be 
honorably  won,  that  was  unconquerable. 
Among  the  rich  there  was  a  consciousness  of 
responsibility,  a  pride  in  the  security  of  our 
institutions  and  in  the  justice  of  our  laws,  that 
helped  many  a  struggling  wayfarer  over  the 
thorny  paths  leading  to  fame  and  fortune. 

It  was  a  helpful  and  generous  society  such 
as  this  that  made  real  pauperism  terrible  ;  for 
it  was  held  that  a  man  who  had  to  beg 
had  no  friends,  and  to  have  no  friends  was 
to  be  an  outcast  for  cause.  We  have  re- 
tained the  ethics  of  that  day  as  to  the 
genuine  pauper,  the  man  who  has  gone  down 
under  accumulated  misfortune ;  but  we  have 


iiS      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

brought  forth  a  troop  of  beggars  on  horse- 
back, who  are  riding  rough-shod  over  what- 
ever there  is  of  patience,  and  decency,  and 
industry  in  the  land. 


XXIII. 
ON    TO    WASHINGTON. 

RECENTLY  great  bodies  of  men  have 
moved  on  Washington  with  the  avowed 
purpose  of  demanding  legislation  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  poor.  Participated  in  chiefly 
by  native  born  Americans,  these  demonstra- 
tions deserve  attention,  not  so  much  because 
they  are  a  new  manifestation  of  the  growing 
idea  that  government  is  to  support  the  peo- 
ple, as  because  they  prove  that  conditions  of 
pauperism  are  no  longer  hateful  to  all  Amer- 
icans. These  vagabonds  lived  on  the  coun- 
try like  a  raiding  army.  Partly  through  ter- 
rorism, partly  through  sympathy,  and  largely 
through  policy,  they  were  fed  and  clothed 
by  the  communities  through  which  they 
passed ;  and  not  one  of  these  recipients  of 
alms  has  yet  been  able  to  perceive  that  he 
lost  anything  in  character  or  self-respect  by 
the  experience. 

But  if  millions  of  dollars  can  go  to  Wash- 
ington and  demand  legislation,  why  shall  not 
119 


I20      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

millions  of  men  do  the  same?  Is  there 
really  greater  danger  to  the  republic  in  the 
presence  at  the  capital  of  a  mob  a  million 
strong  than  there  is  in  the  presence  there  of 
the  agents  and  attorneys  of  selfish  interests, 
who  do  not  hesitate  to  bribe  those  whom 
they  cannot  intimidate  or  deceive?  Capital 
has  cried  "  On  to  Washington!"  for  thirty 
years,  and  no  serious  alarm  has  been  felt 
anywhere.  If  labor  now  takes  up  the  re- 
frain, it  is  following  a  distinguished  prece- 
dent. The  republic  still  lives,  and  what  is 
lawful  for  one  class  cannot  be  unlawful 
for  another. 

The  seat  of  government  was  located  on 
the  banks  of  the  Potomac  far  away  from  the 
great  cities,  for  the  reason  that  it  was  feared 
that  Congress  and  the  executive  departments, 
if  nearer  the  populous  towns,  might  be  sub- 
jected to  intimidation  by  the  people.  Old 
world  experiences  show  the  wisdom  of  this 
policy  so  far  as  monarchies  are  concerned, 
but  it  is  doubtful  if  a  republic  of  the  magni- 
tude and  intelligence  of  the  United  States 
can  hope  to  profit  much  by  it.  Destroy  the 
confidence  of  the  American  people  in  their 


O.V  TO  IVA  SHING  TON.  1 2 1 

representatives,  and  if  they  conclude  to 
march  on  the  capital,  its  distance  from  the 
centers  of  j^opulation   will   not  appall  them. 

Great  pecuniary  interests  have  intrenched 
themselves  at  Washington  in  such  a  manner 
as  to  defy  any  ordinary  expression  of  dis- 
pleasure on  the  part  of  the  people.  They 
have  complete  possession  of  one  political 
party,  and  they  have  had  sufficient  influence 
with  the  other  to  cloud  its  utterances  and  to 
paralyze  its  arm.  Their  agents  come  and  go 
noiselessly,  attracting  no  attention  and  ex- 
citing no  sense  of  danger. 

If  the  victims  of  these  laws  —  who  are 
many — were  to  follow  the  example  thus  set 
for  them,  the  capital  of  the  United  States 
would  be  speedily  transformed  from  a  peer- 
less winter  resort,  a  favorite  place  of  resi- 
dence for  persons  of  wealth  and  fashion,  into 
a  teeming  camp  of  forlorn  and  desperate 
men. 

If  the  American  workingman  ever  be 
moved  to  assert  himself  at  the  capital ;  if 
after  a  generation  of  false  teaching  he  shall 
appear  there  to  demand  for  himself  the 
relief  which  others  have  not  failed  to  secure, 


122      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

he  will  not  be  bound  by  the  rules  that  obtain 
in  polite  society,  nor  will  he  follow  the  pre- 
cedents, established  by  the  lobby.  The  work- 
ingman  who,  through  delusion  or  otherwise, 
concludes  to  visit  the  scat  of  government  to 
demand  what  he  conceives  to  be  his  rights, 
is  sure  to  be  an  object  of  much  concern,  not 
only  to  the  people  of  Washington,  but  to 
the  whole  body  of  thoughtful  Americans. 

Probably  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  assume 
that  the  danger  signal  has  sounded.  We 
have  seen  two  movements  on  Washington 
representing  the  extremes  of  American  soci- 
ity.  One  was  of  wealth,  the  other  was  of 
poverty ;  both  were  wholly  selfish,  both 
were  predatory.  One  had  as  much  right  and 
justice  on  its  side  as  the  other,  which  was 
none  at  all.  Both  mistook  the  nature  of 
the  government.  Both  assumed  that  its 
province  was  to  take  care  of  the  people  like 
a  wise  father — to  regulate  their  business  for 
them,  to  direct  them  where  and  when  and 
with  whom  to  trade,  to  coddle  this  industry 
and  to  destroy  that,  and  to  provide  work  and 
wages  for  everybody. 

It  will  not  be   possible   much    longer  to 


ON  TO  WASHINGTON.  123 

confine  these  forays  to  a  single  class.  The 
degradation  of  the  wealthy  has  found  its 
counterpart  in  the  degradation  of  the  im- 
poverished. Lazarus  will  stoop  as  low  as 
Dives ;  the  tramp  will  jostle  the  millionaire 
on  Pennsylvania  avenue  and  in  the  corridors 
of  the  capitol.  Hereafter,  if  the  ways  and 
means  committee  is  to  hold  inquiries  on  the 
lines  with  which  it  has  familiarized  the 
people,  the  poor  and  wretched  will  crowd 
the  witness  stand  along  with  the  rich  and 
proud.  If  congress  may  legislate  money 
into  the  rich  man's  pocket  it  may  do  the  same 
for  the  poor  man.  We  need  not  marvel  if 
labor  shall  repudiate  all  intermediaries  and 
demand  hereafter  that  every  largess  intended 
for  itself  shall  be  paid  directly  into  hand.  In 
a  land  nine-tenths  of  whose  voters  may  be  ar- 
rayed on  the  side  of  toil,  it  will  not  long  be 
possible  to  persuade  a  majority  of  the  peo- 
ple that  millionaires  and  corporations  are 
the  only  proper  almoners  of  the  govern- 
ment's bounty. 


XXIV. 

A    FIERY    PATH. 

THE  dangerous  propensities  of  Privilege 
should  receive  tiie  most  solemn  con- 
sideration at  the  hands  of  that  large  and  in- 
fluential element  which  has  achieved  fortune 
through  its  own  industry  and  sagacity,  and 
without  the  assistance  of  unjust  laws. 

It  is  possible  that  the  natural  tendency 
of  men  enjoying  the  same  conditions  of 
wealth  and  power  to  come  together  in  a 
common  interest,  has  made  the  honest  riches 
of  this  country  too  careless  of  the  methods 
by  which  dishonest  riches  have  been  amassed. 
If  so,  the  possessors  of  great  fortunes  hon- 
orably won  cannot  be  warned  with  too  much 
emphasis,  that  the  security  which  they  enjoy 
and  the  conditions  which  make  the  prizes 
they  have  gained  worth  having,  rest  alone 
upon  the  public  sense  of  the  wisdom  and 
justice  of  our  laws.  The  honest  wealth  of 
the  country,  in  a  word,  cannot  afford  to  make 
common  cause  with  the  wealth  that  has  been 
1-4 


A  FIERY  PATH.  125 

accumulated  by  the  deception  and  oppression 
of  labor,  and  by  the  operation  of  laws  so 
shamefully  unjust  that  a  self-respecting 
American  cannot  witness  their  effects  with- 
out feeling  the  spirit  of  rebellion  rising 
within  him. 

In  its  best  possible  phase  protectionism 
is  the  most  pronounced  form  of  socialism 
that  America  ever  has  known.  When  the 
hollow-eyed  inhabitants  of  our  garrets  and 
cellars  meet  to  demand  that  the  rich  shall 
share  their  luxury  with  them,  we  do  not 
hesitate  to  denominate  that  manifestation  of 
socialism  "anarchy."  When  a  few  men  who 
live  by  their  wits  assemble  to  demand  that 
everybody,  rich  and  poor,  shall  contribute  to 
them,  we  are  in  the  habit  of  calling  that 
manifestation  of  socialism  "protection." 

Protection  has  brazenly  seized  upon  every 
business  interest  and  endeavored  bv  threats 
and  falsehoods  to  persuade  honest  men  to 
make  common  cause  with  it  against  its  pro- 
testing victims.  It  has  arrayed  labor  against 
capital  in  countless  places  and  with  increas- 
ing vehemence,  because  it  has  flagrantly 
broken  its  promises  and  boldly  engaged   in 


126     GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

oppressions  unknown  in  America  before  its 
day. 

It  is  based  on  a  grotesque  disregard  of 
human  nature,  and  is  the  discredited  expo- 
nent of  a  theory  exploded  in  history  and 
against  which  popular  government  is  a  stand- 
ing protest — that  the  rich  should  and  will 
take  care  of  the  poor.  It  has  deceived, 
robbed  and  exasperated  labor,  until  it  has 
embittered  the  needy  and  spread  desperation 
among  the  wretched.  It  has  emphasized  the 
class  idea  in  a  republic  where  all  are  equal, 
and  on  more  than  one  occasion  it  has  pre- 
cipitated strife  that  has  amounted  to  civil 
war.  It  is  as  much  the  foe  of  honest  wealth 
as  it  is  the  foe  of  honest  toil  and  the  worst 
enemy  of  honest  government. 

No  privileged  class  ever  yet  mounted  to 
luxury  and  ease  without  carrying  with  it 
more  or  less  of  the  respect  which  success, 
even  of  the  dubious  sort,  usually  commands. 
The  tariff  lords  of  America  are  no  exception 
to  the  rule.  The  ties  of  society,  of  good 
fellowship,  and  of  party  are  strong,  and  po- 
litical action  that  is  calculated  to  disturb 
them  is  likely  to  be  condemned  by  men  who 


A  FIER  V  PA  TH.  1 27 

may  have  nothing  to  fear  from  it.  In  every 
society  also,  there  is  an  element  that  stands 
in  dread  of  change;  that  is  timid  almost  to 
the  point  of  cowardice  ;  and  that  is  forever 
expostulating  with  the  sincere,  restraining 
the  courageous,  rebuking  the  bold,  and  en- 
treating the  determined  to  be  cautious. 

Every  moral  revolution  of  which  we  have 
any  record  has  had  first  to  deal  with  this  re- 
pressive influence  on  the  part  of  good  men, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  more  brutal  manifesta- 
tions of  dislike  on  the  part  of  the  ignorant 
and  the  vicious. 

•'  Business  interests,"  many  of  them  hav- 
ing no  affiliation  whatever  with  slavery,  were 
intolerant  of  all  agitation  of  that  question, 
and  they  spoke  practically  with  one  voice  in 
favor  of  peace  on  any  terms  until  the  flag  fell 
at  Sumter.  Compromises  are  satisfactory  to 
business  interests ;  every  surrender  of  a 
principle  is  applauded  in  business  circles ; 
every  standard  that  comes  down,  every  flag 
that  is  struck  for  the  sake  only  of  peace, 
brings  security  and  confidence  to  business 
interests.  Consult  business  interests,  and 
there   is  no  wrong  too  offensive  to  be  borne 


1 2 S       GO  VERNMENT  A ND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

in  behalf  of  peace.  Left  to  the  sagacious 
men  who  speak  for  business  interests,  every 
great  evil  would  be  permitted  to  cover  the 
land  with  infamy  and  to  involve  a  nation  in 
ruin,  before  they  would  risk  a  dollar  of  trade 
in  an  attack  upon  it.  Business  interests  have 
been  known  to  commit  suicide,  but  they 
never  yet  have  turned  their  backs  upon  an 
interest,  good  or  bad,  that  had  money  to 
spend. 

Business  interests  to-day  are  opposed  to 
further  agitation  of  the  tariff  question.  The 
right  and  wrong  of  it  —  even  the  possibilities 
of  infinite  mischief  that  lie  in  the  contention, 
do  not  concern  them.  They  will  cheerfully 
submit  to  any  injustice,  any  abuse,  any 
wrong,  any  danger,  if  by  that  means  appar- 
ent stability  can  be  gained  and  buying  and 
selling  promoted.  Business  interests  do 
not  give  expression  to  the  conscience  or  to 
the  nobler  aspirations  of  a  nation ;  they 
voice  the  timidity  of  capital  and  the  concen- 
trated selfishness  of  men.  American  busi- 
ness interests  opposed  and  repressed  the 
patriots  of  '76;  they  resisted  the  men  who 
fought  the  war  of  1812;  they  held  the  anti- 


A  FIER Y  PATH,  129 

slavery  leaders  at  bay  for  a  generation,  and 
they  now  almost  solidly  confront  the  men 
who  refuse  to  accept  a  partial  victory  over 
Privilege  as  a  final  settlement  of  the  con- 
test. 

"What  man  is  there  that  knoweth  not  how 
that  the  city  of  the  Ephesians  is  a  worshiper 
of  the  great  goddess  Diana  and  of  the  image 
which  fell  down  from  Jupiter?"  The  temple 
of  Diana  was  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  an- 
cient world.  The  worship  there  carried  on 
and  the  lucrative  manufacture  and  sale  of 
shrines  for  the  great  goddess  were  not  to  be 
lightly  assailed,  even  by  the  apostle  to 
the  gentiles.  These  things  "  could  not  be 
spoken  against."  Yet  Diana  is  in  the  dust, 
her  shrines  have  vanished,  the  artificers  who 
thrived  on  the  delusion  of  the  people  have 
left  no  trace,  and  even  the  place  where 
the  hopes  and  interests  of  the  pious  and 
the  selfish  centered  is  known  no  more  of 
men. 

We   have   in  the  United   States  to-day  a 

legislative  fetich    which  a  privileged   class, 

assisted  by  business  interests,  has  sought  to 

guard  as  sacredly  from  the  inquiring  eyes  of 

9 


130      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

unbelievers  as  the  Ephesians  protected  the 
image  that  fell  down  from  Juj:)itcr.  This  class 
teaches  that  the  American  idolatry  cannot 
be  discussed  with  safety;  that  any  modifica- 
tion of  it  must  be  attended  by  the  gravest 
danger;  and  that,  in  spite  of  known  imper- 
fections, it  must  be  applauded  at  all  times, 
and  particularly  so  when  an  uproar  takes 
place  as  a  result  of  the  preaching  of  truth 
and  liberty,  which  always  have  been  at  war 
with  false  gods  and  false  doctrines. 

No  doubt  business  interests  have  suffered 
and  are  to  suffer  still  more  as  a  result  of 
tariff  agitation  and  uncertainty.  Men  can 
no  more  escape  the  penalty  of  collective 
Wrong-doing  than  they  can  escape  the  pen- 
alty of  individual  wrong-doing.  We  sought 
in  many  ways  to  avoid  the  consequences  of 
the  slavery  sin,  but  the  expiation  came  at 
last.  We  shall  not  escape  the  penalty  of 
the  great  transgression  which  now  confronts 
us.  The  civil  war  continued  "  until  all  the 
Wealth  piled  up  by  the  bondman's  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  of  unrequited  toil  was 
sunk,  and  until  every  drop  of  blood  drawn 
with   the  lash   was  paid  by  another  drawn 


A  FIERY  PATH.  131 

with  the  sword."  "  The  judgments  of  the 
Lord  are  true  and  righteous  altogether." 
Business  interests  can  hope  for  no  real  sta- 
bility so  long  as  this  great  wrong,  behind 
which  many  of  them  are  intrenched,  shall 
endure. 

If  it  be  urged  that  this  is  a  fiery  path,  it 
may  be  said  that  the  feet  of  millions,  for 
whom  business  interests  do  not  speak,  have 
pressed  it  uncomplainingly  for  years.  It  is 
a  fiery  path,  indeed,  but  it  leads  to  justice; 
and  without  justice  there  can  be  no  peace. 


XXV. 

IS    IT    WELL    ENOUGH? 

THREAD  of  change  is  the  sentiment  which 
-' —  the  disreputable  rich  employ  to  intim- 
idate the  reputable  riches  of  the  land.  When 
all  other  "  arguments  "  fail,  the  man  of  plun- 
der and  privilege  asks  the  man  whose  fortune 
comprehends  no  stolen  dollars,  if  it  is  not 
wise  to  let  well  enough  alone? 

Honest  wealth  should  weigh  this  imperti- 
nent question  well.  Is  it  well  enough,  that 
the  government  of  the  United  States  is  in 
the  hands  of  a  rapacious  combination  which 
is  at  war  with  every  legitimate  business  in- 
terest? 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  a  great  political 
party  has  become  the  creature  of  these  self- 
seekers,  using  its  power  to  further  their 
greed? 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  through  the  terror- 
ism of   Privilege   no  man  in  that  party  dare 
raise   his   voice   in    protest   against   the  de- 
grading doctrines  which  it  upholds? 
132 


IS  IT  WELL  ENOUGH?  i33 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  the  ignorant  and 
thoughtless  have  been  educated  to  the  belief 
that  an  intolerable  system  of  economy  cannot 
be  discussed,  criticized  or  qualified,  without 
disaster  to  business  and  industry? 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  organized  labor  is 
already  on  a  war  footing  in  many  places, 
and  that  strikes  are  developing  as  much  sav- 
agery in  our  cities  as  was  once  witnessed  on 
the  frontier? 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  employers  enjoying 
public  bounty  have  engaged  in  conspiracies 
to  intensify  periods  of  depression,  by  closing 
their  works  and  leaving  labor  in  distress — 
the  better  to  enforce  the  idea  that  interfer- 
ence with  Privilege  is  dangerous? 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  all  over  the  coun- 
try there  are  political  mills,  the  owners  of 
which  can  be  persuaded  by  their  confeder- 
ates in  the  management  of  the  party  that 
bestows  legislative  favors  upon  them,  to  op- 
erate or  to  close  their  establishments  accord- 
ingly as  the  necessities  of  that  party  may 
dictate? 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  every  consideration 
of  civilization  and  humanity,  of  progress  and 


134      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

justice,  so  far  as  this  great  American  party 
is  concerned,  should  be  made  to  depend  upon 
the  lust  of  this  one  swollen  and  conscience- 
less class? 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  in  a  republic  where 
equality  used  to  be  taught,  every  member  of 
this  party,  from  highest  to  lowest, — thewisest 
as  well  as  the  dullest, — now  insists  that  it  is 
the  legitimate  province  of  political  organiza- 
tions and  governments  to  increase  wages  and 
to  provide  work  for  everybody? 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  the  men  who  profit 
by  this  system  are  relentlessly  impoverishing 
American  labor  tjy  importations  of  inferior 
races,  and  filling  tiie  breasts  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  workingmen  with  the  convic- 
tion that  they  are  suffering  from  injustice, 
with  which  it  is  not  in  their  ])ower  lawfully 
to  contend? 

Is  it  well  enough,  that  there  is  growing  up 
all  over  the  country  a  belief  that  ])lunder  and 
not  justice  is  the  controlling  s]jirit  of  govern- 
ment? 

Is  it  well  enough,  finally,  that  these  mis- 
creants should  couple  themselves  with  all 
other  men  of  wealth,  and  with  matchless  inso- 


IS  IT  WELL  ENOUGH?  i35 

lence  proclaim  the  falsehood  that  attacks  upon 
their  laws  and  their  riches  are  a  menace  to 
all  laws  and  all  riches? 

There  need  be  no  dread  of  any  change 
that  promises  to  strip  these  men  of  their 
power  and  pretensions.  Properly  enough, 
there  may  be  the  gravest  reasons  for  dread- 
ing the  final  consequences  of  apparently  in- 
vincible injustice  and  oppression. 

There  is  security  in  impartial  government; 
there  is  danger  in  every  departure  from  it. 
We  have  had  sufficient  notice  of  the  progress 
and  the  motive  of  this  agitation  for  the 
restoration  of  the  constitution  and  the  laws 
to  their  original  purpose.  The  movement 
proceeds  on  lines  of  peace,  justice  and  truth. 
No  man  can  foretell  the  hour  when,  bursting 
the  restraints  that  now  govern  it,  it  may 
leap  in  maddened  fury  beyond  the  control  of 
reason  or  of  right. 

This  is  not  a  despotism,  with  a  great 
standing  army  ready  to  do  the  bidding  of  a 
king  whose  will  is  law.  It  is  a  republic,  the 
government  of  which  derives  all  its  pow- 
ers from  the  governed.  The  men  of  wealth 
are  comparatively  few;    the  men  who  have 


J 3^      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

no  wealth  are  numerous.  If  the  few  rich 
may  now  oppress  the  many  poor,  what  guar- 
anty have  we  that  presently  the  tables  may 
not  be  turned? 

This  is  a  government  of  law.  The  dis- 
honest rich  have  made  these  unequal  laws. 
If  in  some  dark  and  desperate  hour  the  dis- 
honest poor  shall  band  together  to  glut  their 
money  hunger  on  the  wealth  of  the  land,  as 
the  dishonest  wealth  has  been  banded  to- 
gether for  years  to  devour  the  fruits  of  a  na- 
tion's industry,  we  maybe  sure  that  they  will 
not  lack  the  power  to  crystallize  their  ideas 
into  law  and  that  they  will  not  discriminate  as 
between  individuals. 

If  the  motive  to  despoil  the  many  is 
strong  in  the  breasts  of  the  few,  what  will  it 
be  in  the  bosoms  of  the  many  when  they 
come  to  apply  the  same  savage  doctrine  to 
the  fcv.'?  The  men  who  have  accumulated 
fortunes  honestly,  and  the  men  who  hope  to 
accumulate  anything  honestly,  may  be  as- 
sured tliat  the  pendulum  of  injustice  is 
likely  to  go  as  far  in  one  direction  as  it  has 
gone  in  another.  That  is  a  change  which 
they  well  may  dread. 


XXVI. 
WHERE    TO    LOOK     FOR     THE     REMEDY. 

THE  way  out  of  this  labyrinth  of  error 
and  mischief  is  straight  out.  Devious 
courses  have  been  attempted  in  vain;  modi- 
fications of  injustice  will  bring  no  permanent 
relief.  While  the  principle  remains;  while 
wicked  laws  and  practices  prevail;  while  it  is 
possible  for  one  interest  to  prey  upon  an- 
other interest;  while  the  forms  of  justice  are 
invoked  to  promote  injustice,  class  must  be 
pitted  against  class,  misunderstandings  must 
increase,  violent  measures  must  be  resorted 
to  on  occasion  by  both  sides,  and  the  turmoil 
must  continue.  Privilege  of  every  descrip- 
tion— Privilege  in  the  nation,  Privilege  in  the 
states,  Privilege  in  municipalities,  cannot  be 
tolerated  in  any  degree.  Privilege  in  a  re- 
public is  everywhere  and  forever  wrongs 

The    great  middle  class  of  the  country, 

which  unfortunately  has    allied  itself    thus 

far  with  the  supporters  of  these  abuses,  must 

be  looked  to  for  the  remedy.      The  rich  who 

137 


138    GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

bribe  and  the  poor  who  are  bribed  may  as 
well  be  eliminated  from  the  discussion.  Nat- 
ural distrust  of  the  party  which  has  timor- 
ously assailed  one,  and  perhaps  the  greatest, 
of  the  strongholds  of  Privilege,  has  deterred 
many  members  of  the  middle  class  from  join- 
ing in  the  reform  movement;  but  social 
allurements,  a  growing  subserviency  to 
wealth,  an  increasing  aversion  on  the  part  of 
many  well-dressed  people  to  association  with 
the  working  classes,  and  an  almost  invincible 
determination  on  the  part  of  thousands  of  peo- 
ple who  work  for  salaries,  to  misunderstand 
and  view  with  suspicion  the  millions  who 
work  for  wages,  are  chiefly  responsible  for 
the  fact  that  the  gulf  between  our  "upper" 
and  "middle"  and  "lower"  classes  has  be- 
come well  nigh  impassable. 

The  middle  class  of  to-day  is  as  profoundly 
interested  in  the  abolition  of  Privilege  as, 
in  the  days  of  slavery,  the  middle  class  of 
that  period  was  interested  in  the  abolition  of 
that  institution.  While  it  maintains  quasi 
social  and  political  relations  with  the  great 
freebooters  of  the  period,  it  is  being  ground 
to  powder  between  the  millstones  of  insa- 


WHERE  TO  LOOK  FOR  THE  REMEDY.   I39 

tiable  avarice  on  one  side  and  of  hopeless 
and  desperate  poverty  on  the  other. 

No  doubt  the  large  and  ignorant  labor 
element  which  is  under  the  influence  of  Priv- 
ilege, a  part  of  the  time  quieted  by  promises 
of  booty  and  a  part  of  the  time  inflamed  to 
madness  by  disappointment  and  thirst  for 
revenge,  will  concern  itself  for  some  years  to 
come  with  the  wages  dispute;  but  the  great 
mass  of  the  American  people — the  men  and 
women  who  live  in  well-ordered  houses,  who 
aim  to  keep  up  appearances,  who  go  to 
church  and  whose  children  go  to  school,  can- 
not intelligently  consider  this  question  with- 
out perceiving  that  they  have  a  prodigious 
interest  in  a  change. 

The  protected  labor  camps  have  intro- 
duced to  the  people  of  this  country  a  scale 
of  living  so  low,  so  wretched,  so  abhorrent, 
that  the  problem  as  to  how  few  household 
articles,  how  scant  a  wardrobe,  and  how  lean 
a  diet  can  be  made  to  suffice  for  human  be- 
ings, may  be  said  to  have  been  solved;  but 
the  great  element  between  the  extreme  of 
poverty  and  the  extreme  of  wealth,  which 
does    not    yet    despair,  but  which    finds  it 


140     GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

harder  every  year  to  provide  the  necessaries, 
nearly  all  of  them  taxed  in  the  interest 
of  Privilege,  must  eventually  bury  partisan- 
ship and  examine  into  the  causes  of  their 
hardships  with  the  gravity  that  they  de- 
serve. 

The  average  members  of  the  middle  class 
who  do  not  and  cannot  receive  any  benefits 
from  the  protective  tariff  pay  as  roundly 
under  the  system  of  taxation  on  consump- 
tion as  the  richest  men  in  the  country.  They 
and  their  wives  and  families  may  wear  and 
use  as  many  things  as  millionaires  and  their 
wives  and  families.  Their  houses  must  be 
furnished;  they  must  be  decently  clothed; 
they  must  have  wholesome  food  in  variety. 
Except  for  certain  luxuries,  which  are  not  so 
heavily  taxed  as  the  necessaries,  the  family 
of  the  preacher,  lawyer,  architect,  doctor, 
railroad  employe,  merchant,  or  farmer,  who 
earns  one  thousand  or  two  thousand  dollars 
a  year,  may  consume  as  much  and  pay  as 
much  in  federal  taxes  as  the  family  of  the 
capitalist  whose  income  is  a  hundred  thou- 
sand or  a  million  dollars.  Can  we  wonder 
that  the  hard  conditions   of  American   life 


WHERE  TO  LOOK  FOR  THE  REMEDY.    141 

have  excited  the  amazement  and  the  com- 
miseration of  all  our  foreign  visitors? 

It  is  folly  to  delude  one's  self  with  the 
idea  that  this  system  of  taxation  is  the  result 
of  accident  or  of  unintentional  error.  It  is 
the  deliberate,  well-calculated,  and  coolly 
predetermined  method  by  which  wealth  gains 
unfair  advantages  for  itself  and  shirks  public 
burdens.  It  is  a  part  of  the  great  edifice  of 
fraud  that  has  been  built  up  around  the  cen- 
tral idea  of  Privilege.  It  is  one  phase  of 
the  great  public  wrong  that  has  produced 
the  American  millionaire  and  the  American 
tramp  in  such  numbers  that  they  occupy 
separate  divisions  in  our  censuses,  and  that 
has  all  but  exhausted  the  wealth-producing 
people  who  may  be  found  between  the 
two. 

Multitudes  of  business  men  and  working- 
men  who  have  no  direct  interest  in  the  pro- 
tective tariff  are  nevertheless  made  to  suffer 
by  the  periods  of  contraction  and  inflation 
which  inevitably  follow  the  buffeting  of  this 
question  in  politics.  The  daring  gamblers 
of  the  protected  class  can  take  their  chances. 
They  win  or  lose  heavily.      It  is  their  trade. 


142      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

They  are  prepared  for   the  casualties  of  the 
war  in  which  they  arc  engaged. 

It  is  not  so  with  the  legitimate  commerce 
and  industry  of  the  land.  They  find  them- 
selves disorganized  by  circumstances  over 
which  they  have  no  control.  They  are  sub- 
jected to  all  manner  of  alarms  and  conjec- 
tures, to  every  variety  of  doubt  and  panic. 
They  seek  no  favors;  they  will  quietly  sub- 
mit to  no  imposition;  they  merely  ask  to 
be  let  alone  and  to  know  that  the  future 
has  no  surprises  in  store  for  them  in  the  way 
of  dishonest  and  meddlesome  legislation. 
But  they  can  be  sure  of  nothing  so  long  as 
this  question  remains  the  football  of  parties. 

While  men  are  free,  and  speech  is  free, 
and  presses  are  free,  the  supporters  of  Priv- 
ilege must  be  on  the  defensive.  There  will 
be  no  peace  while  this  error  lasts.  So  long 
as  one  true  American  voice  or  pen  endures, 
there  will  be  no  ground  for  hope  that  the 
taxation  of  all  men  for  the  benefit  of  a  few 
men  will  become  the  settled  and  accepted 
policy  of  the  nation. 

Privilege  may  continue  in  one  form  or 
another  for  years;    it  may  even  extend  its 


WHERE  TO  LOOK  FOR  THE  REMEDY.    143 

lines  and  gain  strength  at  times.  It  may 
blacken  the  reputations  of  its  foes,  and  with 
the  assistance  of  a  corrupt  society,  it  may 
fortify  with  seeming  respectability  its  own 
detestable  leaders;  but  its  victories  will  be 
unsatisfying  and  temporar}',  bringing  no  set- 
tlement and  justifying  no  reduction  in  the 
numbers  necessary  for  the  defense  of  an  in- 
stitution which,  in  the  nature  of  things,  can- 
not be  at  peace  with  its  victims.  In  the  hour 
of  its  mightiest  triumphs  it  will  be  in  the 
gravest  danger,  for  in  the  presence  of  glori- 
fied wrong  new  moral  forces  in  opposition 
will  spring  into  being  on  every  hand. 

This  is  the  prospect  that  confronts  the 
honest  wealth  and  the  legitimate  business 
and  industry  of  the  country.  They  can  make 
the  struggle  short  or  long,  as  they  please. 
They  can  do  away  with  Privilege  in  a  single 
campaign,  if  they  will.  Their  power  is  not 
in  question;  their  virtue  is  in  question. 


XXVII. 
DESPERATE  RICH  AND  DESPERATE  POOR. 

WITH  both  protected  capital  and  pro- 
tected labor  becoming  more  arrogant 
every  day,  and  with  every  new  dispute  de- 
veloping novel  elements  of  ferocity  and  reck- 
lessness, he  need  not  be  looked  upon  as  an 
alarmist  who  invites  the  attention  of  the 
plain  people  of  America  to  these  unhappy 
conditions. 

The  desperate  rich  and  the  desperate  poor 
may  be  content  to  pursue  their  quarrel  as  to 
work  and  wages  and  plunder,  to  the  end; 
but  the  millions  who  have  no  selfish  interest 
in  the  dispute,  who  have  wearied  of  the  tire- 
some contentions  and  the  audacious  assump- 
tions of  both  extremes,  and  who  now  and 
then  experience  a  sensation  of  alarm  in  the 
presence  of  some  new  expression  of  violence, 
cannot  much  longer  escape  the  conclusion 
that  they  have  a  duty  in  the  premises. 

Already  we  have  seen  virtually  the  en- 
tire army  of  the  United  States  engaged  for 
144 


DESPERATE  RICH  AND  POOR.       MS 

the  maintenance  of  peace  as  between  these 
two  factions.  Already  we  are  familiarizing 
ourselves  with  the  strike  leader's  flippant  use 
of  the  word  "revolution."  Already  we  have 
seen  our  transcontinental  railways  picketed 
by  troops  as  are  the  thoroughfares  in  Russia 
when  the  czar  rides  forth.  Already  portions 
of  the  militia  of  more  than  one  American 
state  have  mutinied  against  the  authority  to 
which  it  has  sworn  obedience.  Already 
there  have  come  threatenings  of  rebellion 
from  states  that  had  not  yet  been  carved  out 
of  the  wilderness  when  the  scene  at  Ap- 
pomattox was  enacted.  Already  the  rich 
man  is  revolving  in  his  mind  the  problem 
and  the  possibility  of  "strong  government." 
Already  multitudes  of  Americans  are  dem- 
onstrating their  lack  of  faith  in  their  own  in- 
stitutions, by  the  eagerness  with  which  they 
seize  upon  and  indorse  the  dreams  of  state 
socialists  and  the  visions  of  the  poorly  dis- 
ciplined intellects  of  the  wretched. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  situation  or  in 
the  half-hearted  and  tentative  measures  of 
relief  that  have  been  proposed,  to  reassure 
the   man  who  is  in  earnest  in  his  belief  that 


146      GOVERNMENT  AND  CO.,  LIMITED. 

Privilege  is  morally  wrong,  and  that  the  se- 
curity of  free  government  demands  its  utter 
and  immediate  extirpation. 

Many  of  the  ideas  on  which  the  repub- 
lic was  based  have  become  inoperative. 
Through  the  aggressions  of  a  class  we  have 
been  led  away  from  the  safe  and  simple  rule 
bequeathed  to  us  by  immortal  patriots,  and 
have  taken  on  ourselves  the  injustices  and 
discriminations  which  scandalize  the  worn- 
out  despotisms  of  Europe.  The  only  prac- 
ticable and  prudent  course  open  to  the  peo- 
ple is  to  return  to  first  principles,  and  with 
uncompromising  firmness  cut  away  every 
new  growth  that  does  not  harmonize  with 
their  everlasting  truths. 

The  way  out  is  straight  out  to  the  higher 
ground  of  honesty  and  to  the  purer  air  of 
truth.  The  men  who  linger  hesitatingly  over 
the  well-worn  columns  of  figures  and  the 
fumbled  tables  of  statistics,  from  which  they 
have  been  accustomed  to  elucidate  the  eco- 
nomic value  of  robbery,  may  as  well  be  left 
to  the  congenial  society  of  the  great  plun- 
derers and  the  degraded  paupers  which  the 
system    has   produced.     To  no  member   of 


DESPERA  TE  RICH  AND  POOR.       H? 

this  objectionable  trinity  will  a  moral  ques- 
tion appeal.  Faith  must  be  had  in  the  great 
body  of  the  people,  for  in  spite  of  many  pre- 
judices and  great  preoccupation,  they  may 
yet  be  depended  upon  when  properly  ap- 
proached, to  dispose  of  this  question  cor- 
rectly and  for  all  time. 

With  the  issue  once  presented  as  it  should 
be,  and  as  it  will  be  before  much  progress  can 
be  hoped  for,  there  will  be  for  a  season  but 
two  political  parties  in  this  country — one  of 
honesty  and  the  other  of  dishonesty;  one  of 
morality  and  the  other  of  immorality. 

Those  American  people  who  ask  as  a 
right  for  themselves  more  than  they  are  will- 
ing to  accord  to  others  do  not  constitute  the 
majority;  they  are  an  insignificant  minority; 
their  plague  spots  of  avarice,  disorder  and 
woe  do  not  characterize  the  republic.  If 
they  did,  the  case  would  be  desperate  indeed. 
The  profounder  currents  of  national  life, 
often  vexed  and  impeded  by  the  follies  and 
vices  of  these  interests,  are  not  seriously 
contaminated  as  yet  by  the  excesses  which 
they  have  encouraged.  The  recuperative  and 
reformatory  power  of  the  masses  living  far 


hS     government  and  CO.,  Limited. 

from  the  scenes  of  these  injustices  has  not 
been  impaired.  It  may  need  direction,  it 
may  need  education,  it  may  require  disci- 
pline;  but  it  does  not  lack  virtue  or  energy. 

To  that  uncorrupted  democracy  which 
has  viewed  with  patience,  if  not  with  indiffer- 
ence, the  vicious  systems  and  policies  de- 
signed for  its  own  spoliation,  which  asks  no 
injustice,  and  which,  at  no  distant  day,  will 
demand  and  accept  nothing  but  justice,  the 
appeal  in  behalf  of  good  morals  and  good 
government  must  be  made.  It  has  not  failed 
the  republic  in  the  past;  it  will  not  fail  it 
now. 

Thoughtful  men  do  not  need  to  be  told 
that  the  next  great  struggle  of  civilization  is 
to  turn  upon  the  relations  between  capital 
and  labor.  They  know  that  portents  of  this 
momentous  conflict  are  visible  even  now  in 
every  enlightened  nation.  Whether  it  is  to 
be  a  battle  of  ideas  alone,  or  one  in  which 
rivers  of  blood  shall  flow,  they  cannot  tell, 
but  of  one  thing  they  may  be  certain:  The 
rage  of  that  conflict  will  beat  fiercest  upon 
the  nation  that  has  most  to  answer  for  in  the 
way  of  injustice  and  oppression. 


M 

Ti 
love 
domes 
atmosp. 
shine   ot 
The  Indep. 

In    Bird 

i6mo„   26 

Mr.  K 
reportf 
in  the 


.e 
ce 


VVis- 

^rature. 

mo.t     212 


liper  of  the 

pronounced 

2le  who  has 

?,  crisp  and 

•s   of   real 

id    many 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


Form  L9 — 15m-10,'48(Bl039)444 


TJMVERSITY  of  CALIFORNIA: 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 

LIBRARY 


Ml 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  823  388    4 


H1T64 
S515g 


